Great Hotels of the World, the London-based hotel sales and marketing alliance, is delighted to report a 51% increase in meetings and incentives enquiries for 2011 in comparison with 2010, illustrating immense growth in the MICE travel market.

Great Hotels of the World’s meetings and incentive team help planners find the perfect venues for events, thanks to their diverse portfolio of over 200 unique meeting properties. Director of Sales and Marketing, John Clarke, comments, “We are delighted at the level of increase in enquiries that our MICE desk has reported this past year. Our service level agreement both to our member hotels and our clients has facilitated this growth. The ease of using one point of contact, our one-hour response to enquiries to acknowledge receipt and our 24-hour response policy, providing a detailed proposal to clients within 24 working hours, are all factors which have contributed to our success and growth.”

53% of Great Hotels of the World’s MICE enquiries have come from the UK and Ireland, followed by Germany (16%) and France (13%). Based on 2010, 2011 has seen a 39% increase in new enquiries from the UK and Ireland, an 18% increase in new enquiries from Germany and a 96% increase in new enquiries from France. Other enquiries have come from the Belgian market and the Scandinavian market, as well as the US, Middle Eastern, Russian and Asian markets. Great Hotels of the World’s MICE department has also seen a 47% increase in enquiries from agencies.