In this context, Travel2latam spoke with Claudio Sances, National Manager of Meetings Tourism at SERNATUR, National Tourism Service of Chile.
How are you experiencing participation in an event like Fiexpo?
Super good, as always Fiexpo for us one of the best fairs, we are doing quite well and our exhibitors also say so. Now we have 17 companies inside our stand, including Convention Bureau, convention centers, tour operators, hotels, even a cruise product.
The first day of the fair went quite well and the new people who came here for the first time to Fiexpo inside our stand are very happy.
There have been activations here, for example a wine tasting, would you like to expand a little on that?
Yes, more than anything it was a wine tasting for the inauguration of the stand with authorities. The head of the Chilean Foreign Ministry came here in Panama, ProChile also came. And we had prepared for the National Director of Tourism to be there, but unfortunately he had to cancel. The thing is that there are many events in parallel.
What are the latest developments happening in Sarnatur?
We are going to several events and above all it has worked a lot for us as our main task is attracting international conferences. From January to May we have already made 13 applications to international conferences, of which we have won 12, that is, we have a fairly high success rate and we are starting to travel. The first thing was now Fiexpo, and we have already fully started the IBTM in Mexico, where we are going to attend with a small stand for prospecting to see if next year 2026 we can have a more business-like stand.
We are also going to the ICCA Summit Dominican Republic, we will be in Mexico and we close our participation with Imex América; That's about the MICE segment.
You were talking about the applications, in which regions will these events be held?
Most of those 11 congresses that were won are in the city of Santiago, and the others are in Puerto Varas and Viña del Mar.
What are the news regarding connectivity and infrastructure?
There are many countries that have the same infrastructure, and many very similar things. What I think has worked very well for us is our ambassador program. We have had 85 ambassadors appointed since 2017 to date, and this is super interesting data. In 2023 we applied for 36 candidates and won 29, of which more than 45% were from ambassadors appointed by Sernatur. And now, of the 11 won between January and May 2024, more than half are from ambassadors appointed by us.
This project has helped us increase the number of annual applications for our country. Because as I said, we have good infrastructure, good places to hold events, and obviously good places to visit pre and post congresses. We are training these ambassadors, we tell them what the importance of the MICE segment is, and we even meet with people from ICCA, so that they do different trainings, and they themselves are discovering how to bring to their event and make it much more beneficial for their local society.