2021 Busan 3 New Unique Venues Selected: Busan X the Sky, P.ARK and Busan e-Sports Arena

Feb. 23, 2022, SEOUL, South Korea /PRNewswire/ -- Busan's leading MICE venues, Busan X the Sky, P.ARK and Busan e-Sports Arena, have been officially registered as the 2021 Busan Unique Venues. Having conference facilities and infrastructure that can conduct MICE events of various sizes, the venues are expected to greatly contribute to attracting domestic and foreign MICE events to Busan.

Busan Metropolitan City and Busan Tourism Organization (BTO) received applications for 2021 Busan Unique Venue Recruitment from December 24 to 31 last year and conducted document screening and on-site inspection on the 18th of last month. The 3 selected venues are Busan X the Sky, P.ARK and Busan e-Sports Arena. For venues that passed the document screening, the MICE Industry Division of Busan and the Convention Bureau of BTO (CVB) conducted the on-site inspection. The evaluation criteria are Busan-related characteristics, event hosting experiences, suitability for unique venues, and foreign language capacity. To be selected as a Unique Venue, a score of 80 or more should be obtained from each of the two agencies.

Busan X the Sky received high marks from reception capacity of fewer than 100 people and the experience of hosting various MICE events such as G-STAR 2021 Welcome Reception. P.ARK got a pass for indoors and outdoors-combined facility capacity that can hold medium-to-large-scale events with more than 1,000 people.

Busan e-Sports Arena received high scores for its location in the old downtown area, which lacks meeting facilities, and the potential to attract MICE, reflecting interest in e-Sports, which has recently spread mainly in Greater China.

Busan Metropolitan City and BTO classified the Unique Venues into three stages of "new, growing, and matured" and plan to strengthen direct support through phased support, starting this year. The practical support measures are: 1. Unique Venue's self-promotion and marketing subsidy, 2. a support system through an open call for 17 existing venues and new Unique Venues in 2021, 3. subsidies for publicity costs such as advertisement, promotion, and printed materials, 4. B-Unique Venue promotional content production including responsive e-book and Unique Venue promo video, and 5. providing education and consulting for each phase.

An official of BTO said, "In the contact-free society due to COVID-19, the demand for tourism and MICE for Unique Venue is remarkably increasing." "They are valuable assets for attracting and hosting domestic and international MICE events in Busan. We will spare no effort to lay the foundation for holding events at Unique Venues and continuously discover new venues so that we can practically support them," he emphasized.

Busan has been discovering unique facilities (Unique Venues) that present the unique characteristics of Busan and actively utilizing them to attract MICE events. In particular, 80% or more organizers of the international conference in 2021, who participated in the Multiple District Unique Venue Competition Project, said that they were satisfied with the Unique Venues. This year, the Unique Venue support will be expanded.

In fact, 93% of the organizers of the international conference, who participated in Haeundae International Conference Complex (HAEVENUE) Unique Venue Competition Project last year, said that they were satisfied with the 2020 International Symposium on Fish Nutrition and Feeding held at Nurimaru. And 92.5% of them were satisfied with the Federation of Immunological Societies of Asia-Oceania (FIMSA 2021) held at MUSEUM 1.

Also, the 128^th Korean Chemical Society Symposium, General Assembly and Equipment Exhibition(Busan X the Sky Observatory), and the 98^th Symposium of the Korean Society for Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine(BEXCO) recorded satisfaction of exceeding 80%.