Monday, November 2, 2009

MICE Venues - what about cruise liners?

I read an article in The Sunday Times yesterday showcasing MICE venue options on cruise liners. One cruise giant - Royal Caribbean - has been making strides in promoting its liners as venue options for MICE activities. How interesting! I thought it would be a good exercise to take a peek into what liners have to offer MICE organisers:
- state of the art equipment (audio-visual)
- meeting rooms with a variety of space configurations (depending on the size of the liner, this could go up to seating for 400 attendees): Royal Caribbean liners offer executive boardrooms, multimedia screening rooms, Conference Centres etc.
- dining spaces - from casual dining to fine dining
- accommodation - various levels of luxury
- leisure activities, facilities - making it easy to run team-building exercises
- staff services - porters, guest relations officers etc

I guess the list can go on. One great thing - you don't have to travel far to the next venue. Having said that, the liners these days are massive with each level covering areas equivalent to multiple football fields joined together.....so maybe ther might be quite a lot of walking to do.

The one drawback, though, is that guests have to commit to slightly longer periods for attending the event, unlike a land-based venue where one can leave at any time. But, that is a small price to pay for an experience that would be impactful and very unique.

It would be great to see more and more MICE actvitities being held on cruise liners.....then I would have the opportunity to attend one of such meetings or events!