The Meetings Industry Association

The MIA is the UK and Ireland's leading professional organisation for the meetings industry. Founded in 1990 the MIA is the largest trade association for all organisations involved in the meetings industry and has become the forum for all professional organisations committed to improving the standards of the UK meetings industry.

The MIA brand is synonymous with quality and professionalism. MIA 's own accreditation scheme (Accredited in Meetings) offers an assurance to buyers that members will deliver their promise of exceptional standards.

Why Become an MIA member?
MIA members enjoy a number of significant advantages. These include:

• Being seen as one of the very best organisations in the meetings industry by your customers, employees, stakeholders and competitors.
• The use of powerful business tools and objective external assessment to stimulate and measure performance improvement in service delivery and business excellence.
• Benchmarking your organisation against the best in class.
• Using the Accredited In Meetings quality standard to promote your organisation to existing and new customers.
• Demonstrating your organisation is a quality employer.
• Becoming a member of the MIA is the first step on the path to being accredited.

What does it mean to be Accredited In Meetings?

MIA's Accredited In Meetings standard provides the meetings industry and its buyers with a universally recognised indicator of quality for meetings space and services.

Accredited In Meetings is relevant, not only to hotels, but to conference centres, all other styles of venue and very importantly, meetings industry suppliers.

The most noticeable aspect of the Accredited In Meetings scheme is its simplicity. The scheme is effective because it encourages continuous improvement across three levels: Entry, Silver and Gold. Achievement of each is dependent on attainment. Entry level is compulsory for all MIA members.

Having Accredited In Meetings as a requirement of MIA membership means that simply being an MIA member demonstrates to buyers that your services have passed a stringent quality assurance accreditation; it's an additional benefit to MIA membership.
The Silver and Gold level of Accredited In Meetings are optional to MIA venue members. Achievement of these levels sends a positive signal to potential clients that superior service levels have been achieved.

Merseyside is leading the way in promoting Accredited In Meetings as a world class standard in the conference industry and has one of the highest concentration of MIA member venues in the UK. The Mersey Partnership is committed to improving quality standards throughout its tourism and conference work, in support of the quality policy issued by VisitBritain, the agency that markets Britain to the rest of the world.

Please contact Alena Tan on 0151 237 3965 or email alena.tan@merseyside.org.uk for more details on this opportunity. The Mersey Partnership may be able to help with a subsidy on membership and accreditation costs subject to availability.