My Vision for ICCA pretends to imagine how the Association should react in the next 10 years facing all the changes that we are leaving in our business environment, how our members can keep the advantage leading their organizations and help them to be much better doing business feeling that they are part of a great association that keep a step ahead from the rest.
First of all I want to say that I fully support what Martin Sirk and his staff have been doing in the last 7 years, they have done an excellent job working on the day to day challenges, running the organization in a high level showing clearly that we are in good and capable hands keeping values and establishing priorities with a clear direction.
My vision and proposals don’t want to interfere with that, I pretend to focus on the broader international challenges and ensure that ICCA remains professional and efficient enough to meet them supporting what they are doing.
Our industry is expected to hold strong in the next 10 years but to attract business and customers will require significant innovation on business models, organizational capability and how we better use technology for these purposes.
We have to imagine this near future living in a complex environment with uncertain economic climate and unexpected situations like the volcano eruption in Iceland that stop the world for many days without flights leaving and reaching Europe.
New mergers around the planet, dominant huge companies in many sectors, including the meetings one, creating like monopolies that make more difficult the competitiveness of single companies. At this point I will say that associations were and are a way to join efforts against these new monopolies and we have to keep these associations safe of this treats otherwise we will have the guidance based in their own interests against our general interests and we will lose our only possibility to keep identity and competitive advantage against them.
We have to be aware of this kind of situations and more when these monopolies will take the lead of many associations of the same business sector at the same time.
Our challenge will be to recognize the shifts taking place and find tools and strategies to survive and thrive in these hard times.
We need to help our members to keep the industry value chain prepare for the future, providing better education, networking, accurate and intelligent information and approaches of how to face the new business models, the recent global recession forced us to review our strategies and showed us that our industry was not an exception suffering many consequences so we have to be prepare to get that- we have to work hard on make our regional chapters stronger, understanding the real needs and giving them the correct tools to get more business with high respect to their customs and business culture, they |
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are our main assets, if we pretend to be a global association we have to understand and recognize that they represent us with their expertise and knowledge despite the region where they are based and the language they speak. All the regions are important and make our association stronger. See the extraordinary football world cup organized by South Africa supported by all Africa see how Asia and middle east continue its fast development and how brilliant were the 2008 Beijing Olympic games, see the fantastic winter games host by Vancouver in Canada 2010, see how Latin America where I’m proud to belong will host the Olympics in Rio 2016 and the football world cup in 2014 in Brazil and how great is our congress now in India and it will be in Leipzig and then in Puerto Rico. All the regions always need an opportunity to demonstrate that they can do it because we are professionals of this business no matter the region we belong.
We have to continue expanding the image of our industry in all the continents influencing governments and private sectors about the value of our business and how it contributes with the economic development, innovation in many areas, new jobs, knowledge transfer, new investments and professional development. We have to become top priority for them if we want to succeed.
Sustainability based in ethical and environmental factors will influence the decision of organizations to choose their future venues so we have to work hard on this matter giving our members guidance to face these challenges.
Personalize meetings, new event technology and how to apply it at the right time, price based transactions , growth of smaller and more specialized meetings, more quality of content ,all these factors came to stay and we have to invest time and professionalism to sort them.
New investments in infrastructure , more competitors around the world, more destinations looking for the same business, new players with a better knowledge of our sector, China, Brazil and India getting stronger as economic powers so we need to keep advantage with a strong interaction among our members to compete.
I fully believe that I can contribute with my experience to make ICCA keep it’s leadership and move it ahead facing all these trends, it won’t be enough to make things better, we need to move fast and keep advantage in many areas like quality, creativity, added value and use of technology, we need to be proactive and 100% professional to meet collectively our goals.
I promise you that I will put all my enthusiasm, dedication and professionalism to make it possible with a strong commitment with you and your business.
My best regards
Arnaldo Nardone |
