MICE Industry Ready For Comeback, Asperapi: Mid 2022 Back In 2019 Posisi

Asperapi press conference, Friday 10 December. (Mary Handayani/VOI)

JAKARTA - Chairman of the Association of Indonesian Exhibition Companies (Asperapi) Hosea Andreas Runkat said he did not expect that the exhibition conditions at the end of 2021 would be much better than conditions in 2020. Seeing this condition, he admitted that he was optimistic that the MICE (Meetings, incentives, conferences, exhibitions) industry ) will recover in the middle of 2022.

However, said Andreas, this prediction must be supported by a controlled COVID-19. According to him, if during the Christmas and New Year holidays there is no increase in COVID-19 cases, then this prediction can be realized.

"Regarding MICE itself, after I saw it at the end of this year. If there is no movement in January, I still hope that by mid-2022 we will have crawled into the position in 2019," he said at a press conference, at the JCC, Senayan, Jakarta, Friday, 10 December.

For your information, based on data from the 'Global Economics Significance Business Event in 2018' by Oxford Economics, Indonesia is still ranked 17th. Indonesia has great potential in this sector.

Furthermore, Andreas admitted that he was somewhat surprised that the MICE industry was able to hold 42 exhibitions from 64 exhibitions throughout Indonesia, after previously being stopped due to the peak of COVID-19 cases in June 2021.

"I am a bit surprised by the conditions at the end of this year. Thank God, thank God, so the exhibition can run again," he said.

Previously reported, Andreas said that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the MICE industry, because the industry gathered masses of people. Therefore, during this pandemic, exhibition business actors cannot do much at all.

"How do you want an exhibition if we are asked to keep our distance from one another. Reduce crowds and gather mass. Meanwhile, the exhibition activities that have been carried out so far are all related to things that are actually prohibited during the COVID-19 pandemic," he said.