On December 8th and 9th, I attended the World Bank Group Tourism Forum 2015 at two of GWU's neighbor buildings- World Bank Group Headquarters and IFC Headquarters. The theme of the forum was “Driving Development Through Tourism”. I define it as an association meeting because one of the two institutions of the World Bank is "International Development Association".
The Forum was opened with the speech by President of the World Bank Group, had the CNN and New York Times correspondents as two of the moderators and panelists of Hilton Worldwide CEO, AirAsia CEO and Ministers of Tourism all over the world. As you can tell by the speakers, the forum had been very informative valuable and it went through many facets of tourism industry. I want to highlights some of my insights of this two-day conference from the angle of event management.
Venue:
Both venues for each day were well secured, the venues had a strong security system, from a number of securities by the gate, to sending bandage and checking IDs of each attendees, and on December 8th, there was an alert for emergency drill to remind everyone stay inside the building. To attendees, it brings a safe feeling in such a protected building.
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| Reception at World Bank Headquarter Building |
The attendees for this conference had been kept engaged in several ways. In spite of the interesting ideas brought up by the speakers, first, the organizer created a hashtag(#Tourism4Dev) on Twitter and the audience were encouraged to participate. Second, the online version made attendees from all over the world could join the forum back at home, I remember on the first half day, the host said there were more than 4,700 audience stayed online. Lastly, the Q&A parts were quite engaging, coordinators of each session were very helpful, they actively gathered audiences' questions on the paper cards and passed them to the moderators, also the online attendees can raise questions as well!
Topics and Speakers:
All the speakers are very experienced in the tourism industry. The organizer used it as a very good marketing tool to attract audiences, they put the names and positions of the key speakers on the poster, though some of them did not come.
The 11 session panels were all informative and covered different topics of tourism development. The top three topics that interested me was "Sustainability, Cultural and Heritage, and Crises Confrontation".
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| From left to right: Ms. Maggie Lake, Anchor/Correspondent, CNN Ms. Sandra Howard, Vice-Minister for Tourism, Colombia Mr. Christopher J. Nassetta, President and CEO, Hilton Worldwide Ms. Aireen Ornar, CEO, AirAsia Berhad |
As I mentioned about the online meeting system, it is an innovative way that has been widely used in many conferences, but I still feel it cool as I got up late this morning, opened my lap-top computer at home and joined the first session online while doing make ups.
Other technologies were also used in this conference, such as simultaneous interpretation headphones were used to help non-English speaking audiences; and remote tele & Webcom system to connect with two panelists that are back in their countries.
Conclusion:
Conclusion:
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| Auditorium of IFC Headquarters |
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