The development of the Philippine convention industry became official government policy in 1976, a milestone year that marked the establishment of Southeast Asia’s first full-fledged convention center, the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC); and the creation of the Philippine Convention Bureau (PCB) as a government corporation dedicated to the promotion of Philippines as a meetings and convention destination. That same year, the Philippines successfully played host to the International Monetary Fund - World Bank Joint Conference that signaled the entry of the Philippines into the world conventions market.
Since then, the Philippines has hosted some of the biggest and most important international and regional meetings, conferences, conventions, congresses, and events that have made its capital city, Manila, one of the acknowledged “Convention Cities” of the world.
The Philippine Convention Bureau (PCB) was later reorganized in 1987 to become the Philippine Convention and Visitors Corporation, now known as Tourism Promotions Board (TPB), in response to market developments which embraced the new, more specialized, and quality-oriented Incentive Travel Industry. In recent years, the meetings, conventions, and incentive travel industry evolved into an even wider representation of several specialized sector of tourism to encompass exhibition and events. The convention industry now became known by the acronym: MICE, which stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions/Events.