KL’s new convention centre

For years the Kuala Lumpur business community didn’t take the conference and incentive market as seriously as perhaps it should have. This has all changed recently as hotels have looked to back up their main leisure and business clientele with regular meetings and incentives groups. The culmination is the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, opened in June 2005. It styles itself as ‘Asia’s only purpose-built city centre convention centre’ and is the hub of a market that KL is focusing strongly on.

The stats of this 100-acre site do make for pretty impressive reading as the bright and airy Plenary Hall will be capable of holding up to 2,000 delegates in fixed tiered seating.

This will be backed up with hi-tech audiovisual equipment, an aspect of the design that is key in this increasingly competitive global market. The theatre will have fixed seating for 500 delegates and simultaneous translation booths.

Much thought has gone into the five exhibition halls, meanwhile, as there is around 10,000 square metres of column-free space. For evening functions, the Grand Ballroom will be able to host 2,000 for gala dinners. The ballroom demonstrates the attention to detail that pervades throughout the complex, with an interior that utilises Malaysian timber, smart lighting and local materials wherever possible. It’s not all just about scale, though, as the 20 meeting rooms are designed to cater for groups as small as 43.

As well as the main meetings and exhibition spaces, the site will also have its own four-star hotel and be linked to the existing Kuala Lumpur City Centre site and the Mandarin Oriental hotel, considered by many in the local business community to be the city’s finest hotel. It doesn’t stop there as there will be another 348 rooms at the Impiana Hotel and 643 at Traders, meaning that even the largest of groups will not end up spending half their time being ferried around in taxis. For those who are looking to take on the city’s daunting traffic and drivers, there will also be plenty of parking spaces, both at the hotels and at the conference centre—ideal in a city where parking is at a premium.

The markets for the KLCC will not only be domestic—or indeed pan-regional— because the organisers are looking to expand their focus and attract clients from all over Europe and North America. This is a feat they may well achieve if the KLCC reaches the standards and targets it has set itself.