The ArtScience Museum's (pictured) unique architecture is just one of its allures for groups
Where to...
STAY - The Club
For smaller groups looking for a more intimate experience, The Club on Ann Siang Hill is ideal. With 20 guest rooms, and three restaurants and bars, this upscale boutique hotel is a short walk away from a wide range of cultural and dining options, including Maxwell Market, Lau Pa Sat, and Chinatown.
MEET - Sands Expo and Convention Center
With more than 1.3 million square feet of flexible meeting space, 250 meeting rooms, six exhibition halls, and Southeast Asia's largest ballroom, this venue can accommodate 6,600 for a banquet and up to 11,000 for an auditorium-style lecture.
DINE - Red House Seafood
Singapore is world-renowned for its chili crabs and this is the place for this famed dish. Founded in 1976 as a family restaurant, Red House features red lanterns on its façade and a menu of fresh, excellent seafood such as garlic bamboo clams, fried prawns, lobster noodles, barbecue jellyfish, and codfish.
Offering an unparalleled travel experience, Singapore boasts a rich history, a convergence of three distinct cultures -- Chinese, Malay, and Indian -- and forward-thinking and welcoming people in an ultra-modern backdrop.
"Singapore is a great destination with access from around the globe. The weather is always warm, the Singaporean culture is interesting, the food is amazing, English is widely used, and the Singapore dollar is affordable," says Dee Kelly, senior project director of cievents, a global strategic event management agency for the corporate market based in North Sydney, Australia. "Singapore has changed a great deal in recent years and it is now a sleek, world-class city with a lot to do."
Flight Centre Travel Group, a global travel company, experienced Singapore first-hand when it held its annual Global Gathering for the top 20 percent of its team this summer that cievents helped plan. Coming from all over the world, 3,400 attended the gathering, "Fast & the Furious: Experience the Extraordinary," inspired by the Formula 1 Grand Prix held in the Lion City every year.
Gardens by the Bay, part of the city-state's redevelopment and new downtown area at Marina Bay, was the site of the welcome-night festivities, with a canopy of artificial trees up to 164 feet high towering above. These "supertrees" are actually vertical gardens that generate solar power to Gardens by the Bay, which also houses the Cloud Forest and Flower Dome climate-controlled biomes.
Playing off the already dramatic scene, Flight Centre created an enchanted garden festival complete with a maze, a central bar, a glow garden, Formula 1 simulators, a Little India experience, photo booths, body painting, and dedicated Wi-Fi hotspots (as well as a DJ and elaborate fireworks display) to make sure the scene was irresistible for sharing on social media. Delegates received gift packs with floral headpieces, fairy wings, T-shirts, and LED necklaces, creating quite a scene.
Gardens by the Bay is connected by walkway to Marina Bay Sands, a spectacle in itself, with three hotel towers holding 2,561 luxury rooms and suites, crowned by Sands SkyPark, a tropical oasis of lush gardens, and the world's largest and highest outdoor infinity pool.
The Flight Centre group was based in Marina Bay Sands and events were held in its Sands Expo and Convention Centre, the largest meeting venue in Singapore, with over 1.3 million square feet of space.
"Marina Bay Sands is enormous and fit our whole group," says Kelly. "The rooms are stunning, the bars and restaurants very slick, the meeting space broad, and the pool area is one-of-a-kind."
While in Singapore, the Flight Centre group took in sights including the ArtScience Museum, which celebrates creativity through art, science, design, media, and technology. One of its most amazing exhibits surrounds a visitor in an ecosystem of computer-generated flowers and butterflies that flourish and wither with the seasons and respond to one's movements. Its lotus-shaped structure is made up of 10 "fingers" housing a total of 21 galleries.
ESSENTIAL Tool Box
CONVENTION CENTERS & FACILITIES
Sands Expo and Convention Center (1.3 million sf); Suntec Convention and Exhibition Centre (400,000 sf); Singapore Expo Convention and Exhibition Centre (1.3 million sf)
ROOM TAX
18 percent
READERS Recommend
PINNACLE AWARDS GO TO:
• Singapore Tourism Board
• Marina Bay Sands
The JW Marriott Hotel Singapore South Beach, the brand's first hotel in Singapore, has opened in the hub of the city's arts and culture district. The 634-room hotel consists of both historic and newly constructed buildings. The property has 18,400 square feet of indoor and outdoor event and meeting space, including a 5,600-square-foot grand ballroom housed in a 1930s historic drill hall.
The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) has extended its In Singapore Incentives & Rewards (INSPIRE) program to include groups from Europe and North America in addition to China and India. Created with Singapore Airlines and Changi Airport Group, the program offers cocktail experiences and thematic business tours as well as attractive group airfares. In addition, groups receive complimentary air tickets for every $37,000 spent.
"We are thrilled to be the airline partner of the INSPIRE program, which will undoubtedly help to strengthen Singapore's position as a global MICE destination," says Singapore Airlines Regional Vice President Europe Subhas Menon.
Eligible corporate meeting and incentive groups can choose from 12 complimentary activities that include six cocktail experiences hosted in historic venues or rooftop bars helmed by rising Singapore mixologists, and six themed tours focused on the story of Singapore and its multi-racial and multicultural society. Those interested in learning more about the program can go to yoursingapore.com/mice/inspire.
Singapore is extremely accessible and its Changi Airport was named the Skytrax 2016 World's Best Airport for the fourth year in a row. This is the seventh time in 16 years that the airport has received this designation.
Two new direct flights from San Francisco make it more convenient than ever for U.S. citizens to travel to Singapore. Carriers offering these flights are United Airlines and Singapore Airlines.
Questions or comments? Email [email protected]
This article appears in the January 2017 issue of Successful Meetings.