Malaysia’s first independent Convention Bureau has had a busy and successful first year of operation confirming 24 new meetings with an average size of 320 delegates for Sarawak over the next two years.

More than 40 destination bids were presented up until December last year and of these 24 were won, 17 were lost and decisions are still pending on a further 10.

The 24 confirmed meetings will bring in 7,775 delegates generating an estimated 2,000 hotel room nights and RM 16.3 million in direct delegate expenditure.

The Bureau’s Chief Executive Officer, Mrs Jill Henry said “We are very pleased to have achieved a 58 per cent strike rate in our first year of bidding and this auger well for our future growth. We were pleasantly surprised at our success in converting international and regional events which actually outnumbered the national wins five to one. So this year we are putting more emphasis on enticing national meeting planners to consider East Malaysia. Last year we had challenges getting them to consider moving their events around the country rather than regularly staging them in the capital Kuala Lumpur.”

In addition, the Bureau conducted a series of site inspection visits for 113 meeting planners and association executives from the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, China, Taiwan, Scandinavia, Singapore and Hong Kong and attended major meeting trade shows to build awareness of Sarawak as a meetings destination.

The Bureau also assisted the organisers of 13 conventions held in Sarawak last year with marketing and promotion support for delegate boosting to maximise their delegate attendance. 

“It is an exciting time for us in Sarawak as we are gearing up for our bigger and better meeting facilities coming on stream over the next few years.  Top of the list is the RM 200 million Borneo Convention Centre Kuching with its 36,000 square metres of floor space due to open in mid 2009.  In tandem with the new meeting and exhibition facilities, Kuching will see a doubling of its 3, 4 and 5 star room stock by 2010 with construction of five new hotels.”