The June opening of Marina Bay Sands (MBS) in Singapore has set a new benchmark for the region’s conference, exhibition and incentive industries. The new venue offers a staggering 120,000 sqm of event space – enough room for 45,000 convention delegates and 2,000 exhibition booths. MBS also offers Asia’s largest ballroom with banquet space for 6,000 people.

All of this within a building that is being spoken about globally. Las Vegas Sands chairman and CEO, Sheldon Adelson, has now invested more money into Asia’s MICE industry than any other person or entity. 

CEI Asia: Congratulations on the new opening. You’ve now got the 1,000 people and more groups well covered, but have you scared off the groups of 1,000 people and less?
Sheldon Adelson: You kidding? That’s what we’re getting more of right now. We just had 600 lawyers in, that wasn’t a good experience. But the very next week we had 500 people from Deutsche Bank and it was perfect, it was a flawless event.

There are a few glitches in the opening event for anything, but there’s always glitches. It’s the nature of the business. You can’t buy a suit without adjusting the size. You know, this sleeve is too long, this sleeve is too short – you’ve got to adjust it. So everything that’s done needs adjustment. We needed adjustment, and we’ve done that.

Someone looking at the MBS brochure trying to book their annual event might think, ‘What can these guys do for me on a personal level? I’m just going to be another number in the system…’
You can’t build the kind of backing we have in the global MICE business by treating everybody like a number. The reason why we’re so successful in Las Vegas, and we’re the largest and most successful hotel in the world, is because of our personal touch.

Our conference facility in Las Vegas has 330 meeting rooms. That’s more meeting rooms than all the meeting rooms in San Francisco combined. Or in Los Angeles combined. Our meeting rooms in Singapore, 250 of them, hold more people than the top 35 hotels in this city combined.

We didn’t build ourselves into the largest MICE facility in the world by only catering to large groups. We cater to all sizes of groups anywhere from 10 to 20,000 or more people at a time.

Do you think there is too much conference and exhibition space on offer now in Singapore?
I’ll tell you what’ll happen. Eventually we’ll fill the exhibition centre, because you can only hold 30 full-house events a year. So within a couple of years we’ll book 30 for every year and that’ll be the end of it. We won’t be able to book any more trade shows because we won’t have enough space.

What do you predict for Asia in the next 10 to 20 years in terms of MICE business?
If I were 20 years younger, at least, I wish to be a lot more than 20 years younger… I would take my family and move here, and I would set up new trade shows throughout Asia. To me, it’s a sure thing. 

Look at the healthcare industry in the US, for example. There are so many health care shows that there is an association of health care organisers – MICE organisers for health care. They’re out there by the dozens, if not the hundreds. In Asia, I think there will be more private organisers growing and people have to know how and why to start trade shows. But I don’t see a lot of that ground-level fertilisation going on right now.

A guy like me, an entrepreneur that started from nothing, I knew zero about the subject of trade shows when I started. I’ve now become somewhat conversant on the subject of creating trade shows. I mean I’d love to be back in the business, particularly in Asia.