2.5 MICE Tourism Development History

Although the terms of ‘MICE' and ‘event tourism' have been identified comparatively recently, the event industry has a long history. The origins of MICE can be found in ancient Babylonia and Egypt for at that time they hosted many religious festivals, which attracted many people. Similarly early Chinese emperors used religious and other festivals, and state occasions, to reinforce the sovereignty of a given dynasty.

Recent tourism event activities can be traced from small towns and rural areas. In the early 1970s many places suffered from slow development and few economic opportunities, affected by economic restructuring and a farming crisis in the West. According to Wilson, Fesenmaier, Fesenmaier and Vanes (2001), since the 1970s, economic restructuring and the farming crisis caused a severe loss of rural manufacturing plants and many jobs. Walmsley, Dimaranan and McDougall (2000) also thought economic restructuring linked with demographic changes like out-migration and aging caused the loss of social capital in marginalised areas. Sears and Reid (1992) noted that as rural unemployment rates rose above urban levels, real income growth stagnated in rural areas. These changes limited rural areas' economic development, which forced rural communities to find a way to survive. How to generate the economic revitalization of rural areas was consequently eagerly sought, and the potential importance of tourism was duly noted. Edgell and Harbaugh (1993) described this as one of the more popular non-traditional rural development strategies, while tourism also permitted associated entrepreneurship opportunities. Wilson et al. (2001) contended that many rural area planners had realised that rural tourism is less costly and easier to establish than many other rural economic development strategies. Hall, Roberts and Mitchell (2003) described tourism as often being viewed by many rural regions as one of the few opportunities to enhance the local economy. Thus rural tourism started to gradually dominate rural economic development.

However, the usual tourism strategies are not an omnipotent tool for all rural areas or small towns that enables them to overcome their weak, marginal economic position. Lane (1994) mentioned a number of rural factors that can reduce rural areas' tourism economic effectiveness, which included income leakages, volatility, a declining multiplier, low pay, imported labour, the limited number of entrepreneurs in rural areas, and the conservatism of rural investors. Marcouiller (1997) noted other factors that limited tourism developments: dependence on increased public expenditures for promotion that might not be forthcoming, increased local pressures for resultant public services, increased conflict among user groups, and general concerns over societal costs and benefits of public support for tourism development. What is the most ‘smart strategy' to stimulate a local economy is examined by many rural communities. Based on these expectations and perceived weaknesses, the development of small events and festivals emerged. Rogerson (2005) noted that, in Western Europe, resort towns were the first to recognise the potential benefits of conference and exhibition tourism and started to develop specialist conference facilities during the inter-war period. By the mid-1960s many rural communities began to produce new annual festivals or street fairs designed for family entertainment and oriented to themes (Janiskee, 1990). Not only was this found in Europe, Janiskee and Drews (1998) also mentioned that in much of the US history, the community-wide celebrations in a typical small town consisted of little more than the ubiquitous Independence Day celebration, which led to the development of other small events, especially in the 1980s.

While primal MICE tourism development was initiated from rural areas, the more dominant development started in urban areas in the 1980s. Getz (1997, p. 2) argued,‘event tourism was a new term in the 1980s, but it has become firmly established as a major component of special interest tourism and a significant ingredient in destinations and place marketing strategies'. Since then many travel agencies, hotels, companies, and other communities have organised and received many different kinds of events in the past decade and some are becoming truly global in their appeal, e.g., Singapore World Gourmet Summit (Cheney & Ryan, 2009).

MICE development did not only progress from rural areas and its small towns but also from urban areas. Historically, event development also started from Europe and expanded to the Asia-Pacific area. MICE tourism's origins could be found in Europe and North America, yet it is the Asia-Pacific region in particular that saw a rapid increase in industry activity from the late 1980s. According to Australian Tourist Commission (ATC, 1997), Australia experienced a 167% increase in the number of international visitors attending conferences or conventions between 1992 and 1996. This rapid development of the MICE industry has exceeded many tourism researchers' expectations. Cooper (1999) had predicted in his landmark study in early 1976 the size of the Australian MICE industry for 1993, whose dollar value estimation of the convention sector (as estimated in 1976 and after correction for inflation) was about 73% of the actual figure. Consequently, it can be easily seen that earlier growth had been much stronger than appeared possible more than two decades earlier. This was not only in Australia. Kim and Sun (2008) mentioned that many Asian governments including China, the Republic of Singapore, the Republic of Korea, and Japan gave substantial support to MICE at the national level because they view it as a highly value-added industry. The MICE industry has developed like ‘a raging fire' in the Asian market, and the most pre-eminent increase of MICE development can be found in China.