Pacific World has been busy in the past year. The company formed a strategic alliance with global destination management and event production firm Access Destination Services, creating a group able to draw on a combined 54 offices in 27 countries, and 500 staff worldwide.
The Global DMC and event management organisation has also developed a new destination index, to provide corporate, association and agency planners with an advanced indicator of destination popularity for international meetings, incentives and events. It’s an important tool for a partnership that now handles more than 80 destinations.
“There are two dimensions to the job we do: the logistics management side and the event management side. Pacific World is really on the event management side. Clients expect us to be able to support the design and logistics of their event, and to be there as an advisor on the content of their event,” says Herve Joseph-Antoine, global MD of Pacific World.
“Access has that competency. So whether the clients are other agencies from around the world or corporates or associations, the core skill is the skill of event management. That’s a differentiator for the market. Access has a coverage within north America, which is excellent, and operates an integrated model, as does Pacific World.”
The two companies operate as one company around the world, which alligns everything related to health and safety, security, compliance, anti-corruption, pricing methods and service levels. “We are not working as a network or multiple entities, we are integrated in terms of service levels and staff management,” says Joseph-Antoine.
“In our system, where a client wants to go to one of our destinations and then another one the next time, they do not have to repeat the whole story from the beginning. Same for Access, it is a company with that same high level of integration. The DMC world is so far made of networks. of individual companies and places. Here the idea is to have a model whereby our reactivity is higher, we are after all just two companies.”
Joseph-Antoine maintains the two will not go to a centralised structure, simply sharing systems where possible.
Taking trends from a snapshot
“We have a large amount of data to look at and a way to quantify trends in terms of number of requests we get,” he says.
In February for example, as a result of the index report created by Pacific World, the following results become apparent. The three most popular destinations in terms of sheer numbers were Indonesia, Dubai and Singapore. Quite easy to understand why, says Joseph-Antoine. “Indonesia is becoming popular because a lot of Asia Pacific events supposed to go to Thailand were instead requested by organisers to take place in Indonesia, as a result of the trouble there.
“Dubai has been attracting business in the Middle East for a few months now; its accessibility by air creating a clear trend that we had not seen before.
“Singapore is seasonal. At the beginning of the year, the requests for business conferences for the end of Spring, and September/October, are at their highest,” he says.
Pacific World also has three special interest destinations – where its seen the biggest variation – in February: Portugal, South Africa and France.
“Portugal for a period of time was not very much requested by the market. We’ve seen a lot coming from the French and UK market into Portugal during February.
“South Africa is very strong both for the US market and the Asian markets, both fond of safari incentives.”
France, in terms of growth, is quite a bit behind the other two, he observes.
Other trends Joseph-Antoine has seen include a strong uptake in US travel around the world. In particular into Asia, as a result of Asia being big market for company sales. “It makes commercial sense to have global meetings in Asia as opposed to staying within North America, and this creates the need for travel from the US, definitely more than last year,” he says.
The move into Italy
With North America covered by Access, Pacific World is branching out elsewhere. Italy consistently sits among Europe’s top five destinations, and among the top 10 worldwide. Pacific World has regular business there in the form of conferences and annual meetings and incentives, and by having an office on the ground it can now propose solutions in terms of event management.
“For a while we’ve been looking at expanding, and now we have infrastructure in Italy,” says Joseph-Antoine. “Being successful in Italy requires having a presence and capability for providing event management. We decided to launch after starting with a few large scale events. Italy is an international player, so we have a lot of clients looking for knowledge of their needs.”
However Joseph-Antoine concedes Italy is historically more of a market of local players and local companies, which means the need to provide companies with an international plan for growing their business is still apparent. “It’s another example of responding to demand from our long-term clients,” he adds.
Opening Eyes
For each destination where Pacific World is present, it operates a CSR programme under the title ‘Opening Eyes’. The initiative works for its employees and clients alike.
“In South Africa and the Asian countries you have very rapid economic development, which may lead you to think everything’s going well and assume the standard of living has significantly increased, that these are in fact modern worlds where everything is great. But this is not the case,” says Joseph-Antoine. “We see the opportunity to connect all sides of a place where clients are holding their conferences or events. Our industry is very sensitive to this issue and it has become a component of the experience people expect when they reach our places. Whether in Europe or Africa or Asia, this expectation exists.”
The experience Pacific World offers through its Opening Eyes initiative can be related to education, or to the environment, or to poverty. In general it relates to the people who are left behind by trends of development in our world, at least in South Africa, Asia and Africa, according to Joseph-Antoine.
“But it is always related to the event’s environment,” he adds. “In addition to the business element and the client’s objective, there’s a purely non-business element that really calls to each individual in their own relationship to the world, and to others.”
These elements take place only within the activity time, or the evening time, and encounters vary from trips out to working with with people connected to the place that is hosting the event.
“We are ambassadors of the world because we operate nearly everywhere in the world,” he says. “We consider it our duty to connect people to the world the way it’s really is, not the way we would like to imagine it from the perspective of the corporate world alone.”
This was first published in issue 75 of CMW. Any comments? Email Antony Reeve-Crook
