Seoul is bringing chimaek and K-pop to the heart of Las Vegas to captivate major Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions (MICE) buyers from the Americas.
The Seoul Tourism Foundation and Seoul City announced on Thursday that they will operate a dedicated Seoul promotional booth at IMEX America 2026, the largest MICE exhibition in the Americas. The event will take place from October 13 to 15 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
This exhibition will feature TEAM SEOUL, a collaborative effort including 10 member companies from the Seoul MICE Alliance (SMA), alongside the Seoul Tourism Foundation and Seoul City.
The star-studded lineup includes five luxury hotels: Grand Hyatt Seoul, Sofitel Ambassador Seoul Hotel & Residence, Conrad Seoul, Fairmont Ambassador Seoul, and JW Marriott Hotel Seoul. Additionally, five powerhouse convention and travel industry firms are joining the mix: ioconvex, KR Hospitality & Events, Wow Korea Tourism, EHOO LTS, and Jane DMC Korea.
This year, the Seoul Promotion Pavilion will operate on a pre-registration system linked to business consultations. The strategy is to secure tangible consultation outcomes and a database (DB) by targeting key buyers with actual decision-making authority.
On-site, the Seoul Happy Hour event will be held to showcase Seoul’s food culture. With a chimaek (chicken and beer) theme, the event aims to create a relaxed atmosphere for networking, highlighting Seoul’s appeal as a host city to participating buyers and exploring opportunities for collaboration.
On October 14, the second day of the event, a briefing session will be held for member companies of INCON, a global network of professional conference organizers (PCOs). The plan is to expand the network for attracting large-scale international conferences by targeting major PCOs in the Americas, such as Smith-Berklyn (U.S.), ICS (Canada), and BTC (Mexico).
In addition, the foundation will launch a marketing campaign featuring Karina and Winter of aespa, who serve as Honorary Tourism Ambassadors for Seoul 2026. It will screen a new promotional video and display a large-scale photo backdrop to capture the attention of on-site visitors.
Kim Byung-min, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Seoul Tourism Foundation, stated that its participation this time is focused on generating tangible business results with buyers from the Americas, adding that based on the bid capabilities of Team Seoul—a collaboration between the public and private sectors—and K-culture, it will actively attract large-scale MICE events in the Americas market.
