Malaysia is seeking to become the biggest meetings, incentive, conference and exhibition (MICE) destination in Southeast Asia, said its top tourism officials.

The global meetings sector generates an estimated $280 billion and the conference sector about $78 billion annually, officials said.

The US remains the world's top MICE destination, followed by Europe. In Asia, the Far East has made steady progress in developing world-class MICE facilities.

In the Gulf, Dubai has been leading. Last year it hosted the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund at the new Dubai International Convention Centre.

Malaysia, according to some officials, ranks 23rd as a MICE destination in the world.

However, Malaysia may face stiff competition from the newly-emerging MICE destinations like Dubai and South Africa, senior industry officials told its travel trade professionals at the recent Global Meet Malaysia's top MICE conference.

It has already made a mark in becoming one of the largest Asian tourism destinations in the past few years.

In 2002, Malaysia received 13.29 million tour-ists. Last year, international arrivals reached 10.57 million. This year it is poised to cross the 14-million mark. From January to July this year, Malaysia recorded a 70.5 per cent growth in international arrivals, reaching 9.11 million, compared to 5.34 million in the same period last year.

Kamaluddin Siaraf, the new director-general of Tourism Malaysia, told a gathering of over 500 travel trade and media recently, "Tourism is Malaysia's seventh largest foreign exchange earner. Out of the 10.57 million tourists, 5.2 per cent, or 550,741, were MICE tourists.

"Last year, Malaysia hosted 2,294 international conventions, attracting 550,741 delegates who spent 1.732 billion Malaysian ringgit ($455.78 million). This is about 8.1 per cent of the last year's total tourism receipts of 21.29 billion ringgit ($5.6 billion).

"Due to SARS and other crises, the tourism sector suffered a decline last year. We witnessed a 13.4 per cent drop in tourism arrivals, a17.4 per cent decline in tourism receipts, 21.3 per cent in MICE arrivals as well as a 38 per cent decline in MICE delegates.

"The scenario this year is quite different. We have recorded a strong rebound in international arrivals this year, both in leisure traffic as well as in MICE traffic."