The chairman of Arabian Exhibition Management, Shaikh Mohammed bin Abdullah Al-Khalifa, commented to the Bahrain Tribune that Bahrain has a high potential to lead the region in the conference and exhibition market and pointed out that a well-developed marketing strategy will sharpen the outlook of Bahrain’s tourism sector.
Shaikh Al-Khalifa speaks from experience, as the foremost international exhibitions and conferences organizer in Bahrain, and recommended that the market will be helped by the development of topclass hotel rooms, suggesting an increase of about 12,000 to attract more conventions and conferences. These plans follow a review of the tourism sector, which yielded an agenda that urged the construction of first class hotel rooms of which there are at present only 4,000 to 5,000 such rooms.
A careful review of the industry also resulted in an ambitious plan to properly coordinate the calendar of exhibitions and conferences in the country under a board of planners who will ensure that the events are well spaced out to maximize the profits to local business throughout the year.
Following an example set in Singapore, it was suggested to reconstruct the Mina Salman port area into exhibition halls, to better serve the increased conference and exhibition market. Klaus Scholz, advisor at the Bahrain International Exhibition Center, is confident that unlike Singapore, which rapidly outgrew the developed port exhibition space, Bahrain is in possession of a wellplanned exhibition center and infrastructural facilities that could easily handle regional and medium to large world events.
Recently BIEC’s general manager, Ahmed Shamlan, was appointed to represent the country in the Union des Foires Internationales, a world body of the exhibitions industry. It is hoped that this membership will provide the networking, which is vital for an international marketing campaign. —(Albawaba-MEBG)
