Uncovering the MICE Scam
There is a giant rip-off going on… and you’re on the losing end of it.
by Andrew Millar and Irene Venter
Andrew Millar is the Director of MICEMASTER and has built and deployed many corporate and leisure travel systems over his twenty plus years in the travel industry.
Irene Venter is a director of MiceMaster and has designed, marketed and implemented corporate travel products and systems for leading brands. MICE, the acronym for corporate (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events) is the only procurement sector where employees can spend twice the budget, yet nobody is held accountable and often the corporate does not even know what was spent. SAP nor Oracle can manage this sector of procurement because event costs continuously fluctuate, right up until the event has taken place.
External meetings and conferencing is the fastest growing sector of corporate travel, yet as opposed to flights, hotel and car rental procurement, it has no technology to manage this spend... well now it does; welcome to ‘MICEMASTER’.
Not too long ago, when I was employed by the largest travel group in SA, ‘Group and MICE’ business was the only operationally profitable area of the company, all other profits were made up of supplier overrides. MICE was, and still is, a very profitable area for travel management companies, hotels and PCO's (Professional Conference Organisers) for a few reasons.
You’ve probably already paid the price
The only time most companies know about MICE expenditure is when the invoices appear in the finance department... what little MICE management companies practice, normally happens post-event when it is too late to control costs.
With MICEMASTER, you can manage expenditure pre-event for the first time, when procurement, management of finance should be intervening.
Lost in the mix without being reconciled
Often these MICE costs are scattered across divisions and are never reconciled. There is rarely any reporting and many businesses ask their suppliers for spend reports!
When kickbacks are your setbacks
‘Preferential procurement’ is rampant in this sector, as is double-dipping; some PCOs not only charge you a management fee for organising the event, many take commissions from hotels and bolster their margins by marking up catering, audiovisual, décor, guest speaker costs etc.
Line items that don’t toe the line come at a price
Grey is good! Many internal event planners, PA’s and secretaries are inexperienced. They produce non-specific email briefs, missing many line items. Hence suppliers email back equally grey quotes missing more line items to keep totals as low as possible so that, if they are not already ‘best friends’ with the planner, they are awarded the event.
When you can see clearly now the expense is gone
Compliance and transparency are the exceptions, not the rule with MICE. With supplier quotes and orders invisible to management on event planners’ PCOs’, comparative quotes are not requested, management does not see all the orders and employees are signing hotel and PCO contracts with little understanding of the terms.
Get in touch and let us help you manage and control your MICE spend with PCOs, hotels, venues and suppliers by up to 21% less.