What is MICE and what it covers
First, let us understand what is MICE and how it is defined. MICE is a complete industry or sector and a market. It is a part of the travel and tourism industry, also called MICE tourism, and comprises of travel and tourism for the purpose of business. Now, this is a sub-segment of travel and tourism industry and comes under the business travel category. It actually is a unique tourism and a travel type which covers both business travel and leisure travel & tourism.
The term MICE is an acronym which stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions. The letter C in this word also stands for Conventions and likewise E also can be interpreted for Events. But the word essentially covers and describes the type and objective of people travelling under this category.
MICE means Meetings, Incentives, Conferences or Conventions, and Exhibitions or Events. Meetings could be corporate or association meetings and these generally would be large scale meetings. For corporate these could be sales meet or suppliers meet and meetings like those. For associations it could be meeting of the regional chapters. Most common are the annual meetings for corporate and associations. Incentives or incentive travel generally known as. This type of travel is generally the company paid vacation and travel given to employees as an incentive e.g. for good performance. It could be given to the associates, suppliers and dealers & distributors of a company. Very common type of incentive travel is given by insurance companies to its best performing agents. Conferences or conventions are again forms of meetings as these are also large gatherings. However, these are focused towards one or specific topics or subjects. These are specifically focused on a particular industry or profession. Conferences generally also have a list of subjects or issues within an industry which are addressed or talked upon by some experts or speakers.
And lastly the Events or Exhibitions. These also include trade fairs or trade shows. These are huge gatherings of corporate and executives. As the name suggests, it is an exhibition or a show where companies exhibit their products, services, technologies. These are exhibitors. The other side of it is comprised of visitors who visit these exhibitions to see, know about and may be buy the available or displayed products, services, technologies.