TokyoTomo Travel Guide

Okinawa Prefecture and Okinawa Convention & Visitors Bureau (OCVB) jointly held “Okinawa MICE Contents Fair in Tokyo” inviting travel agencies, meeting planners, and professional congress organizers to make presentation of Okinawa as the MICE venue. The fair consisted of seminar and workshop represented by 17 organizations as exhibitors including hotels, convention centers, and a destination management company, and about 100 people attended the fair, mostly from travel agencies.

OCVB disclosed the fact that the majority of MICE held in Okinawa are incentive tours. Therefore, the venue reservation comes in most cases through travel agencies as air ticket arrangements are normally involved. Kimiyo Uechi, a member of Convention Promotion Team, Tourism & Convention Promotion Department at OCVB, talked about the impression of the fair in Tokyo as follows: “Recognition of Okinawa as MICE site is becoming stronger than ever, but it is not enough in the Tokyo metropolitan area. I felt the need to convey our messages to each member of travel agency staff in Tokyo and other areas.” OCVB is set to repeat this sort of promotion to convince travel industries of Okinawa’s superiority as MICE site.

Uechi says the advantages of Okinawa are local people’s hospitality, security, and the unique culture that makes visitors feel like being in a foreign land, and yet MICE sponsors will be free from anxieties that an overseas venue would possibly entails. OCVB is ready to extend special services and privileges to a group of 50 or more, such as a welcome ceremony upon arrival at the airport and a dispatch of entertainment teams performing folkloric songs and dances to the venue. OCVB rendered such services to 130 groups in total during 2009. Uechi is eager to increase more MICE occasions in Okinawa by offering special benefits as such undertakings bring in a number of visitors and reasonable earnings.

Source: Travel Vision

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