Marriott has increased its focus on the lucrative Chinese meetings, incentive travel, conferences and exhibitions market by launching a consolidated MICE service offering in China.

With this new service, meeting planners and event organizers are able to choose facilities and rooms from more than 30 Marriott hotels in the country into one package via a single contact point. To tie in with this initiative, Marriott International has appointed Wesley Stonehouse as project director for the MICE services in its Beijing and Tianjin cluster of hotels. Eddy Wong is his counterpart for the Shanghai and surrounding area.

Marriott International has a wealth of meeting resources in China. In Beijing, JW Marriott Hotel Beijing, Renaissance Beijing Capital Beijing and the latest addition Beijing Marriott Hotel City Wall offer convention and meeting facilities that cater for MICE events of different scales. In addition Marriott International has a strong line-up of new hotels in China. Recently it announced that it would expand its China portfolio with 18 new hotels now through 2012. When all these new hotels are opened, the Marriott International portfolio in China will encompass 59 hotels providing a total 22,489 rooms.

Industry statistics indicates that Chinese MICE sector is growing at an annual rate of 20% and the country holds more than 4,000 conventions and exhibitions every year. In Shanghai, for example, the city is expected to host about 500 exhibitions and over 1,000 conferences of international scale in 2010.

(China Hospitality News August 7, 2008)