PCMA and the Jordan Convention Bureau (JCB) have partnered to provide business events education to business events industry stakeholders in Amman, Jordan.
The new partnership was facilitated by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Building Economic Sustainability through Tourism (BEST) project, which seeks to enable Jordan’s transformation into a globally competitive tourism destination.
The first educational workshop resulting from the new partnership took place Jan. 18-19 at The Regency Grand Palace Hotel Amman, bringing together 25 industry professionals from the area for sessions designed to share effective strategies to increase competitiveness so they can help attract more regional and international business to Jordan.
Eduardo Chaillo, CEO of U.S.-based Global Meetings and Tourism Specialists, and Jane Culcheth Beard, a U.K.-based experiential marketing director who is the former head of Strategic Events at HP, led the two-day workshop.
In sessions and through exercises, attendees increased their understanding of the dynamics of the global corporate meetings sector, decision-making processes, and how DMCs, meeting planners, and others can work effectively with the Jordan Convention Bureau to promote the destination.
In 2018, the International Congress and Convention Association’s (ICCA) global rankings named Jordan one of the fastest-growing association meetings destinations in the world. USAID BEST, however, recognized a huge opportunity to capitalize on Jordan’s assets to attract, increase, and retain more corporate business events. The partnership grew out of that need.
“This partnership is extremely important for Jordan,” Luma Al-Khatib, head of the Jordan Convention Bureau , told Convene in an email. “It helps open channels of communication and give great opportunities for different kinds of development for the destination in the meeting business in general, and especially for an emerging destination like Jordan.”
PCMA and the JCB are in talks to bring webinars and future educational workshops to JCB members in 2020 and beyond.