NEW MAGAZINE TO REVOLUTIONISE SERVICE TO THE ASIA PACIFIC CONFERENCE, EXHIBITION AND INCENTIVE TRAVEL INDUSTRY

PROFESSIONALS in the conference, exhibition and incentive (CEI) travel sector will have a dedicated magazine next month, lifting the quality of reporting on the industry and boasting a distribution list its competitors cannot compete with.

Joint venture publishing company, SCMP Haymarket, will launch CEI Asia Pacific in October with guaranteed distribution to the top 13,000 CEI travel procurement officers in the region. More than 2,000 supplier copies will also be circulated.

The top 5,000 multi-national companies in the region were surveyed and from this list the senior 13,000 corporate decision makers from these firms were contacted by telephone and added to the distribution list.

CEI Asia Pacific will be published by Mr Tim Waldron, who brings a wealth of experinece from the hugely successful London-based magazine, Conference and Incentive Travel. Mr Waldron will be based in Singapore.

Respected industry figure, Ms Peggy Teo, has joined CEI Asia Pacific as associate publisher and will remain based in Hong Kong. Ms Teo was previously with the Miller Freeman travel group as was CEI Asia Pacific editor, Mr Mark Armsden who will move to Singapore to establish the magazine’s editorial office.

“Our extensive data base will be a strong selling point for this magazine,” Mr Waldron said.

“We could have come into this market and bought and old list, or taken over one of the very tired magazines in the region, but we decided to build our data base from scratch. It was a long and expensive process but one that will benefit our advertisers and readers in the future.”

“There is no doubt this sector has not been catered to in the region editorially in the past and the CEI Asia Pacific team are going to change this,” Mr Armsden said.

“We will be covering the issues that matter and the issues that are relevant corporate travel decision makers. This will be a completely new editorial product.

“We will report on all issues without fear or favour and, importantly, we will set new standards of editorial independence for the sector.”

Mr Waldron added: “We have had a lot of very productive meetings with suppliers around the region to present our product to them and a good cross section of them have indicated this is a sector that will increase in focus for 2001.

“CEI Asia Pacific will be the magazine that corporate buyers refer to and we also want to be seen as suppliers in the region and partners to everyone in the industry.”

CEI Asia Pacific will initially publish 10 issues a year.