Table 1: Top 20 city ranking by number of meetings organised in 2015
BERLIN is the new number one city to meet in according to the latest ICCA ranking of global cities for international association meetings, published this week.
The study captured a record number of 12,076 rotating international association meetings in 2015, 571 more meetings compared to 2014.
Paris now sits in second place this year. Seven other top cities have remained on the charts, albeit taking different positions. Singapore has, however, remained at seventh spot.
Meanwhile, in country rankings, the US and Germany have clung onto pole and second position respectively, while the UK has climbed a rung to third position. Canada is a newcomer to the top 10 list.
Table 2: Top 20 country ranking by number of meeting organised in 2015
ICCA identified 94 additional international association meetings that took place in the US in 2015, eight additional meetings in Germany and 39 additional meetings in the UK. Spain and France dropped by six and 11 meetings respectively.
ICCA CEO, Martin Sirk, commented: “In an uncertain world with ever increasing business disruption, the stability and continuing long-term growth of international association meetings are encouraging more suppliers and destinations to include this market segment in their mix of business. What also remains true is that these are the most complex and long-lead-time meetings to win, requiring excellent research and targeting, top class bidding and presentation skills, and patience.”
He added: “It appears that competition is getting tougher for the traditional market leaders, with faster growth outside the top 10 positions. This might also reflect a trend, as many of the top destinations are starting to create their own international meetings, rather than bidding for traditional association meetings whenever rotation patterns allow, and these new meetings don’t appear in our data, since they don’t usually rotate between countries.”
