# What is “MICE”?

MICE is the trade shorthand for meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions: the business-events sector that buys venues, travel, hospitality and, increasingly, a branded app to run each occasion.

Also called: meetings incentives conferences exhibitions, MICE industry

SSociana team·19 Oct 2026·2 min read

## MICE in detail

MICE groups four kinds of business gathering that share suppliers: hotels, convention centres, destination companies, agencies and tech vendors. In India the Ministry of Tourism's 2019 study sized the sector at 37,576 crore rupees, with about 60% from meetings, incentives and conferences, and meetings and incentives make up roughly 70% of MICE business at five-star hotels. For Sociana the term is a way to read the buyer: a corporate communications lead booking a strategy meet, a channel head planning an incentive trip and an association secretariat running a conference all say MICE when they brief an agency or a PCO. The categories map to occasion types in Sociana rather than to separate products. Meetings and conferences lean on agenda, polls and hospitality; incentives lean on challenges, travel documents and trip agenda; exhibitions lean on stalls, passes and consented leads. Use the word when talking to travel and agency buyers, and the occasion name when talking to participants.

## How Sociana uses it

Sociana does not sell MICE packages or hold inventory. It supplies the app layer: agenda, hospitality publishing, engagement and records for the occasion types MICE buyers commission.

## Example

A single agency programme sheet listed a conclave, a dealer meet and an incentive trip as one MICE calendar, each with its own occasion in the same Sociana app.

[Multi-event & agency appsWhere this term lives in the Sociana app.See how it works](https://sociana.in/features/multi-event-and-agency-apps/)

## Questions

Which events does MICE cover?

Meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions: internal meets, reward trips, congresses and trade shows, all bought through venues, agencies and destination companies. MICE is the trade shorthand for meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions: the business-events sector that buys venues, travel, hospitality and, increasingly, a branded app to run each occasion.

Is MICE a Sociana product category?

No. It is buyer vocabulary. Sociana maps each MICE type to an occasion type and configures the same app modules for it. A single agency programme sheet listed a conclave, a dealer meet and an incentive trip as one MICE calendar, each with its own occasion in the same Sociana app.

How large is the Indian MICE market?

A 2019 Ministry of Tourism study sized it at 37,576 crore rupees, about 60% of it from meetings, incentives and conferences. Sociana does not sell MICE packages or hold inventory. Meetings and conferences lean on agenda, polls and hospitality; incentives lean on challenges, travel documents and trip agenda; exhibitions lean on stalls, passes and consented leads.

## Keep reading

[Multi-event & agency apps](https://sociana.in/features/multi-event-and-agency-apps/)[Agenda, Show Flow & Live / Up Next](https://sociana.in/features/agenda-and-show-flow/)[Conferences & summits](https://sociana.in/event-types/conferences/)[Exhibitions & trade shows](https://sociana.in/event-types/exhibitions/)[Incentive travel](https://sociana.in/glossary/incentive-travel/)[Conclave](https://sociana.in/glossary/conclave/)[PCO](https://sociana.in/glossary/pco/)[What is Event RFP? Meaning at events](https://sociana.in/glossary/event-rfp/)

[Back to Glossary](https://sociana.in/glossary/)

## Want a number for your event?

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Canonical: https://sociana.in/glossary/mice/
Publisher: Sociana by Alien Brains Private Limited (https://sociana.in/)