Congratulations, Germany: 12 points !

18 mai 2011

Whatever you think of the Eurovision Song Contest, and I admit I’m not a great fan; you have to congratulate Dusseldorf for the spectacular staging of this year’s event which confirms just how good Germany is at organising big meetings and events.

Three and a half hours of musical torture could have seemed like an eternity, but it almost went by in a flash, thanks to the excellent production and all the high-tech. It was only during the soul-destroying voting at the end by 43 (yes, 43!) countries – I had no idea Europe was so crowded – that I finally collapsed. It appears that over 100 million people, amazingly almost 12% of Europe’s entire population, were also watching this Euro-German spectacle. 

Many viewers apparently went rushing afterwards to their maps to find out more about the winning country and where exactly it is.

TripAdvisor announced over the weekend a 4,000% increase in traffic enquiring about Azerbaijan!  So you’ll need to get booking your yourt in the mountains as accommodation in the capital, Baku is likely to be scarce in 2012.

One thing is for certain; Germany and Dusseldorf will be an extremely hard act to follow.

More seriously…..

ICCA has just released to its members their country and city league tables for international congresses in 2010. ICCA is the global association of meeting industry suppliers with over 900 member companies and organisations in 86 different countries. 

ICCA collects data every year on international association meetings throughout the world, but their criteria differ from the UIA (Union of International Associations), another organisation which also publishes annual league tables with some surprisingly different results. Somewhat confusing, I agree.

For the purposes of this week’s article, let’s stick to ICCA which claims that their annual “International Association Meetings Market statistics present an in-depth evaluation of trends in the international meetings industry.” The conventions and congresses covered by these statistics must have “at least 50 attendees, be regular events and take place alternately in at least three different countries”.

Although the results will only be officially released to the press today (Thursday), some enthusiastic countries and cities have jumped the gun and already sent out details.

So, congratulations again go to Germany which is ranked No. 1 in Europe and hosted a total of 542 international association conventions in 2010, ahead of Spain (451) and the UK (399).

It is the 7^th year running that Germany has held this European title – a lot longer than ephemeral Eurovision. Germany comes second in the world behind the USA (623).

Spare a thought too for Switzerland which has been steadily climbing the world rankings and enters the top ten at No.10 with 244 international association meetings in 2010.

In the cities index, Berlin comes in 4^th place in the world after Vienna, Barcelona and Paris but ahead of big hitters like Singapore, London and Sydney. And the million dollar question – where is Brussels?

I asked ICCA, which is not very friendly to non-members, and they told me to wait until the press release today! So next time we’ll take a look at Belgium and Brussels in the ICCA and UIA statistics and see some of those surprising differences.

BT