Need for Un-'Conventional' Focus

Capital View

Rabindra Seth

Few among the hospitality fraternity would know that it was Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect of modern India, who laid the foundation of convention tourism, one of the most lucrative segments which has now come to be known as MICE - meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions. After an impromptu initiation to UNESCO in 1955 to hold its next annual meeting in Delhi had the Ashok Hotel and the Vigyan Bhawan built on a war footing.

Sadly, Nehru's pioneering effort was not built upon by successive governments or entrepreneurs although some hotels in the metro cities did add 'conference halls' to their facilities. No one took a cue from our neighbours like Singapore, Indonesia or Malaysia into built state of the art convention complexes. Till today Vigyan Bhawan remains the only dedicated convention facility in the whole country.

Economic reforms helped the realisation that tourism is after all not 'elitist' and that it can be an instrument for poverty alleviation. The sector's potential for employment also began to be appreciated. Finally, after almost fifty years since Nehru's initiative, came the surprise but wholly welcome announcement in the Budget 2003 that two international class convention centres are to be built in Delhi and Mumbai. A little later two more cities were added - Goa and Jaipur - as well as viability funding by government. Sadly again, the projects seem to remain on the files of the finance ministry and have not moved to the nodal authority that is supposed to set the implementation produces into motion.

This became obvious from what transpired at the recent annual conclave of TCFB, India Convention Promotion Bureau headed by the additional DG tourism, Rajeev Talwar and composed of travel agencies and conference organisers.

Neither minister Renuka Chowdhury nor secretary, A K Misra in their addresses referred to the four international class convention centres.

Talwar, however, spoke of proposals for convention centres at Dwarka (a suburb of the capital near Indira Gandhi International Airport) and at the venue of the coming 2010 Commonwealth Games. It is not known whether these would be world class or what their capacity would be.

A private sector initiative to build a modern convention complex in the Sahar area of Mumbai on land owned by the Airport Authority has been in cold storage for over two years. Big hoteliers of Sahar have formed a consortium and approached the Airport to sell, lease or give the land as equity in a joint venture but the Authority is yet to respond.

Still there is no need to despair. Some kindly soul (or souls) have been quietly working away from the shores of India to give this country a world class convention centre pretty soon, sooner than we expect. January 2006 to be precise.

EMAAR, Dubai-based property developers, who own the Dubai Convention Centre, among the most modern in the world, with attached Novotel and Ibis hotels, have been building a convention centre in Hyderabad as part of the Hi-Tech City, which will be commissioned in six months time. Strangely, the good news about Hyderabad as the first venue of an international class convention centre came from a chance meeting on the sidelines of the ICPB conference with Philip Logan, the general manager designate of the "Cyberabad Convention Centre" as the Andhra Pradesh capital's new asset has been christened. Logan is a functionary of the global Accor hotel chain which also specialises in managing convention centres. (Accor has got into a joint venture with Inter-Globe for setting up Ibis brand hotels in India).

According to Logan, the Hyderabad centre will seat 6,500 persons for an inaugural and 4,500 for a plenary session. It will have four breakaway halls with upto a 1,000 seats and many smaller meeting rooms.

There are four banqueting rooms which can accommodate 600 delegates each, Six world class board rooms, a huge exhibition area and, a four star Novotel Hotel with nearly 300 rooms (an Ibis is to be added later).

As an add-on to the Convention Centre, Logan said, EMAAR is also buildings a 27-hole golf course in Hyderabad, an apartment hotel, and 300 luxury villas.

The Cyberabad Convention Centre is spread over 13 acres of land, linked to the highway to the new airport that is coming up only ten minutes drive away.

Accor is in a joint venture with EMAAR to manage convention centres. It looks after the prestigious convention complex in Sydney too.

Speeches at the inaugural session of the ICPB conference gave the impression that neither the government nor the industry is over worried about the absence of large sized conference facilities in India. It was explained away that only one per cent of the world's conferences with more than four thousand delegates take place and two per cent of those with more than 2,000 but less than 4,000 delegates. And, therefore 97 per cent of the market is open to India.

(The author is a freelance columnist and can be contacted at rabseth@yahoo.com)