BMI is a major organiser of events in the international education industry, best known for its student fairs in Latin America. The PIE caught up with Director Samir Zaveri to talk about the company’s evolution and wider industry trends.
The PIE: Tell me about BMI and your business operations.
SZ: We organise over 40 of the leading international student recruitment fairs annually in Latin America, specialised agent workshops in various parts of the world, and a number of other services for international institutions recruiting students such as our agents’ database. We organise a series of eight international student recruitment fairs in Brazil in March called Salao do Estudante and another series of seven in September. Outside of Brazil, our fairs span Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia. Next year we’ll have one in Mexico as well.
The PIE: That is enough to keep you busy.
SZ: Yes but we also have agent workshops in Brazil, Canada, Turkey (the Global Education Agents Workshop that we’ve started in partnership with a2) and new ones in the USA & China as well.
The PIE: Tell me about the one in Turkey?
SZ: Whenever we plan events we do them a good couple of years in advance and we were discussing doing an agent workshop in Europe jointly with [local event organiser] a2. The discussion was around Barcelona and picking somewhere where there wasn’t already a workshop but eventually we settled on Istanbul. It’s easy for people to fly in and out of, it’s a wonderful city, and the weather is still very pleasant in October.
“Istanbul is a wonderful city, and the weather is still very pleasant in October”
The PIE: Going back to student fairs – how hard is it to get lots and lots of students to attend?
SZ: We have been operating in Brazil since 1995 so our events are very well known in the country. Every major agency also participates in the Salao do Estudante fairs. Despite our strong pre-registration vetting, we had queues of over 300 metres to get in this year and fire marshals operated a one in one out system to get into the fair.
The PIE: Is social media an important part of your marketing campaigns?
SZ: Yes, we have a massive social media campaign. We have over 34,000 followers on our Facebook page for Brazil and over 33,000 for the rest of Latin America.
However, one of the most important things especially for Brazil or Latin America in general is you can attract as many students as you want but you have to get the parents too, because at the end of the day the parents are the ones who pay. So we do a lot of high profile promotion in travel, family and business magazines – something no other event organiser in Latin America does.
“In the next five years, Brazil is going to have the two biggest events on the planet”
The PIE: If I ask you to look in the crystal ball and say where the industry is going in terms of demand, what do you see?
SZ: I think numbers are going to continue to grow. I don’t have any doubt about that because students will always want to learn more. People are always wanting to travel and have an international experience. And certainly in Latin America having a second language or having an international qualification is a big plus on your CV. [more>>]
SZ: In Brazil they’re really pushing that. In the next five years, Brazil is going to have the two biggest events on the planet – the Olympics and the World Cup. So Brazil’s going to need a lot of very highly qualified people that speak other languages that can come back from studying abroad either for the short-term or even a degree course to come and help the country grow.
The PIE: What about destination choice?
SZ: I think students won’t all be going to the traditional countries like the US, UK, Canada, Australia. They will still be the most popular, but they are now looking at a much more diverse range of countries. We are already seeing interest in Korea, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Scandinavia, South Africa and Eastern European countries.
The PIE: And booking trends?
SZ: We’ve seen in Brazil that the number of people going through agents is actually starting to go down as a percentage. And more and more people are not having the fear of enrolling directly. In Latin America it was almost unheard of that you wouldn’t go through an agent because Latin American families are very close and they want someone to strangle if their kids had any problems overseas. Now when people have come back and people say they’ve had great experiences, it’s very safe you can talk to my director and so on.
“The percentage going through agencies is going down. But the numbers are increasing so agencies are not noticing”
I think that slowly the percentage of people going through agencies is going down. But at the same time the numbers are increasing so much that the agencies are not noticing that. They’re still seeing increases of 30-40% especially in Brazil in the last couple of years. But I think agents will always be very important and do much more than just send students abroad for a commission. They will still be sending the majority of students abroad for a long time.
The PIE: How does a good agency maintain its position in the distribution chain then? You know so many different education agencies, so who are the trend setters in our sector?
SZ: The agencies we know best are certainly in Latin America and they are very modern in their practices. I know some of those agents go to other countries and visit other agents to learn what they’re doing well. I don’t know many agencies in other countries investing just to send people on a fact-finding mission. And so, they have very, very good front office staff who really know the product. They often go on fam trips and actually know the schools that they’re selling. They’re very selective in who they represent.
“I don’t know many agencies in other countries investing just to send people on a fact-finding mission”
The PIE: And what do you think about this whole NACAC debate on per-head recruiting?
SZ: One of the things we saw [at our events] was that… a lot of universities were members of NACAC, or abided by NACAC guidelines, but they were all equally interested in meeting agents. I think a lot of them are preparing either to work with agents and hope that NACAC will issue guidelines and say no problem, you can work with agents. Or if they don’t then they’ll take their own individual decisions because they don’t want to fall behind in recruitment.
The PIE: How many education institutions make up your client base if you look at all your events?
SZ: We probably have about 1,000 institutions, 250 agencies and about 30 national organisations (like Education USA or Campus France) that participate in our events worldwide.
