HotelOnline is proud to have partnered with and actively participated in the Africa MICE Summit 2025 in Nairobi. The summit brought together leaders across meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions to shape a more connected, competitive, and technology-enabled future for Africa’s business events industry.
Our Co-Founder, Håvar Bauck, contributed in two roles—delivering a keynote and joining a high-level panel—where he shared practical insights on how digital distribution and smarter revenue strategies can unlock consistent growth for venues, hotels, and destinations serving the MICE segment. Håvar is a strong voice for the tourism industry in Kenya and across Africa, and a veteran pioneer of digital distribution and online marketing in Africa’s travel and hospitality sector.
Why MICE Matters for Africa’s Tourism Economy
Africa MICE Summit 2025
Business events are catalysts. A single conference or trade show does more than fill rooms; it stimulates airlift, supports small businesses, seeds new partnerships, and showcases the host city’s capacity to deliver world-class experiences. Across Africa, MICE can:
- Drive higher-value, year-round demand that smooths seasonality.
- Extend average length of stay and boost spend per visitor through pre- and post-event travel.
- Spur investment in infrastructure, skills, and digital capabilities that benefit the wider tourism ecosystem.
- Position destinations as hubs for innovation, trade, and knowledge exchange.
For destinations and properties that get MICE right, the payoff compounds: stronger brand visibility, healthier booking mixes, and more resilient revenue across market cycles.
Our Perspective: Innovation Is About People
At HotelOnline, we believe innovation is not only about software. It is about people who inspire change—event organizers who raise the bar each year, hotel teams that deliver with precision, and public-private partners who turn ambition into action. Technology amplifies that effort, making it easier to be discovered, chosen, and paid—across borders and channels.
Highlights from Håvar Bauck’s Sessions
In both the keynote and panel, Håvar focused on practical ways MICE stakeholders can convert interest into measurable revenue:
- Own your direct demand: Make your website the primary RFP and booking starting point for planners. Clear capacity details, meeting room specs, floor plans, sample set-ups, and transparent package pricing reduce friction and move enquiries to confirmed business faster.
- Distribute smarter, not wider: Treat channels differently. Corporate and MICE buyers do not shop the same way as transient leisure guests. Strengthen your presence where planners actually search, and combine that reach with a conversion-ready direct path.
- Use data to price with confidence: Group segments, lead times, compression days, and event calendars should inform both your rate strategy and your availability controls. Disciplined, data-led revenue management protects margins without sacrificing win rates.
- Fix payments to fix conversion: Cross-border, multi-currency payments are still a bottleneck for many properties. Lower-cost, reliable processing and professional invoicing reduce drop-off and speed up contracting and deposits for groups and events.
How HotelOnline Is Helping Power Africa’s MICE Growth
HotelOnline’s mission is to make African hospitality more visible, bookable, and profitable. For MICE-driven properties and destinations, we are focused on four impact areas:
- Digital Distribution for B2B and Groups
We help hotels and venues show up where planners search, while ensuring that direct channels convert enquiries efficiently. From structured content (meeting room details, images, floor plans) to tailored landing pages, we align distribution with MICE buyer behavior. - Revenue Strategy and Performance Enablement
Our team supports partners with data-informed pricing, segmentation, and calendar discipline—so that group opportunities translate into healthy contribution margins, not just top-line volume. - Frictionless, Cross-Border Payments
Through our payments capabilities (including HotelPay.Online), we support multi-currency acceptance and streamlined invoicing for deposits and balances. Lower fees, higher reliability, and faster reconciliation help finance teams and sales managers close business with less friction. - Practical Enablement and Training
Technology only works when teams use it. We partner with properties to standardize RFP handling, response SLAs, proposal templates, and post-event feedback loops that strengthen repeat and referral business.
A Partnership That Advances the Ecosystem
Our collaboration with the Africa MICE Summit reflects a shared belief: Africa’s business events sector can compete at global standards by combining human excellence with digital execution. By partnering with stakeholders across the value chain—venues, hotels, convention bureaus, DMCs, and technology providers—HotelOnline aims to be a driving force in building a more visible, investable, and sustainable MICE ecosystem.
Looking Ahead
The momentum from this year’s summit is a starting point, not a finish line. In the coming months, we will continue working with partners to:
- Elevate direct discovery and conversion for MICE buyers.
- Tighten revenue strategies around demand patterns and compression periods.
- Reduce payment friction for cross-border corporate and group business.
- Share practical playbooks and training that help teams win more, with better margins.
Innovation starts with conversations like these, and we are proud to contribute—on stage and alongside partners—so that the outcomes reach hotels, venues, suppliers, and communities across the continent.
If you would like to explore how HotelOnline can strengthen your MICE performance, our team is ready to talk.
