Petra Tours to participate in Arabian Travel Market

"There will be a lot of networking to generate MICE business at the upcoming Arabian Travel Market to be held in Dubai on 1-4 May," says Mazen Kawar, one of the managing partners of the Amman-based Petra Travel and Tourism Company.

"Because we have Petra Events Management, which is a special division in our company, my role is to see the ATM as a great opportunity to establish contacts with tour operators interested in generating MICE business at the lowest possible cost," adds Kawar who says "I would tell these companies to come to Jordan because it is very price competitive and that travelers are sure to get an extra bargain because of the breath-taking scenery."

The MICE business is taking the region by storm with many countries, especially in the Gulf, Lebanon and Egypt, posing as conference destinations and incentive travel hubs. Jordan has been quietly following suit but at impressive rates.

"But because of the economic openness that is now taking place in the Kingdom, international companies, institutions and states have been more than willing to hold their events in Jordan especially because of the variety of products we offer in the quality of service, good hotels and state-of-art conferencing facilities," points out Kawar.

"Many companies in Jordan today deal in MICE business and industry meetings, however, most don't have a special division like we do in Petra Tours, a special division created in 2003 to cope with the increase international business, he points out.

However, Kawar is weary about the MICE term. "It is too narrow, that's why when we established our division we called it 'Petra Events Management' rather than MICE which has business connotation, whereas in fact we deal with anyone that wants to hold a conference, an annual meeting or wants to award their employees through sending them on a holiday in Jordan."

He likes the term 'events management' also because it could be organizing a conference for a non-governmental organization, for the United Nations or indeed for television and radio producers, events that are of professional, humanitarian, non-economic nature.

Petra Tours are involved in organizing international meetings at the Dead Sea and the Chinese Products Expo, but Kawar and his team stress their activities are wider as accorded by the average number of industry meetings said to range between 8 and 12 per annum which keeps the division busy all year round.