Professional services, tech and F&B dominate meetings in Singapore: STB

The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) is eyeing growth in events from the professional services, technology and food and beverage (F&B) clusters in 2019, with a few inaugural meetings set to be launched in the city-state this year.

STB has attributed the high number of meetings secured to the multitude of companies in these sectors that have their regional headquarters in Singapore. Tourism receipts from the business travel and MICE sector generated generated S$3.44 billion ($2.53 billion) between January and September 2018 on the back of 10% growth, while visitor arrivals increased by 14% to 2 million during the same period.

Among the inaugural meetings expected to be held in Singapore this year are the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit 2019, the Baker Tilly International Global Tax Conference 2019 & Baker Tilly International World Conference 2019, as well as Oracle OpenWorld Asia 2019. Other professional services meetings secured include the KPMG Asia Pacific Tax Summit 2019 and Insol 2019. 

In total, both the professional services and technology sectors are expected to bring in around 10,500 and 6,000 delegates, respectively, this year. 

Meanwhile, STB says the F&B sector has seen growth on the B2B front. The Global Restaurant Leadership Conference 2019 is moving from Dubai to Singapore this year. Other new events from this sector debuting in Singapore this year include the Southeast Asia Café Expo and Equip&Dine Asia 2019.

Another high-profile event in this sector—the Food&HotelAsia - HoReCa and F&B 2020, will be split to FHA-HoReCa and FHA-F&B in early 2020. The two events are expected to attract 45,000 delegates.

"The event [FHA]'s development into two dedicated shows in 2020 aims to better augment the fast-paced changes of the food and hospitality sectors, and UBM's combination with Informa will open doors to resources that can help us boost value propositions and take our event to greater heights," says Paul Wan, managing director, UBM Singapore, which owns and organises FHA.