Fresh statistics from International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) for 2019 have captured 13,254 rotating association meetings, the highest ever recorded annual figure by the association. The figure was an increase of 317 on last year’s record-breaking number.

Year-on-year, ICCA has reported a promising consistent growth pattern in the association meetings market and its Association Database now includes 21,000 regularly occurring meeting series, 260,000 meeting editions and 12,000 international associations.

The eagerly awaited annual global comparison of country and city performances was also released, with the USA and Paris holding on to their top spots again, respectively in the Country and City standings.

ICCA CEO Senthil Gopinath said: “ICCA’s annual statistics report is one of few that compares destinations’ meetings-related performance on a global scale and therefore provides great insight into global trends in the meetings industry. Given the current circumstances, it is great to once again highlight the consistent growth in association meetings globally. These figures show the need and importance of face-to-face events, and consequently that the industry will be instrumental in the global recovery when the time is right.”

Paris took the City No.1 ranking for the second year in a row, followed by Lisbon, which notched the highest increase in number of events (+38) and moved up four places from sixth place last year. Regular contenders of the Top 5, Berlin (3rd), Barcelona (4th) and Madrid (5th), have made it once again, but Berlin and Madrid swapped places from last year’s rankings.

Impressive newcomers to the Top 50 by number of meetings are Valencia (44 places higher) and Istanbul (40 places higher), respectively holding 48th and 44th position.

In the 2019 country rankings, the USA retained its top spot – titleholder for the last two decades.

The Top 20 remains relatively unchanged with some countries moving up or down a place.

France moved up to take third position from Spain, while similar rank swapping of one position took place between China-P.R and Japan, Portugal and Canada, Australia and Republic of Korea, and Belgium and Sweden.

Only those meetings that meet ICCA’s stringent assessment criteria – rotating between at least three countries, have a proven attendance of at least 50 participants, and are held on a regular basis – are recorded within the statistics.

The full ICCA statistics reports are available now to ICCA members only in the ICCA Destination Comparison Tool.

A public abstract of the report will be released to the public in mid-June.

SOURCE: CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD

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