cdt Visit USA

VisitBrussels-Washington

13 avril 2011

Yes I’m still talking about Brussels, but this time it has an international dimension. At a good humoured event at EMIF 2011, in the presence of Brussels Mayor Freddy Thielemans, the bosses of Destination DC and VisitBrussels signed an alliance agreement to promote Washington, DC and Brussels as top meeting & convention destinations.

In a recent summary from the US side:

“The Alliance will operate under the name ‘Power Cities’ with a tagline ‘A Capital-to-Capital Connection’ referring to the member cities status as world capitals for institutional and association headquarters.

One of the goals of this Alliance is to establish each city as the natural base for association offices and related meeting and event activities. Other goals include establishing the exchange of best practices in marketing and support activities, supporting each city’s marketing efforts to the international meetings audience, and educating the international meetings community on doing business in these markets.”

Yes, this new Power Cities alliance looks like a great initiative.  It is certainly eloquent on goals, although a bit short on detail of how these goals will actually be achieved and how the alliance is going to work in practice?

I have questions! Is there a joint strategy? A joint business plan? A budget for joint actions? A joint team from Brussels & Washington working together at grass-roots level? I hope to get answer to these and other questions when I visit Washington and Destination DC next month.

Practical partnership marketing

The two cities talk about sharing best practice and joint marketing, but it’s really the same principle as an airline alliance. The main objective is to capture business and keep it within a circle of members.

A convention doesn’t normally go back to the same place within at least 3-4 years, but if it rotates among partner cities within the same alliance, there’s a good chance that the original city stays top of mind. And in the meantime it will have picked up some other rotating business from other alliance partners.

Joint marketing is especially important in smaller markets and at tactical events where it makes a lot of sense to share resources & costs. No-one is going to give up their individual city identity (not just yet anyway) at the big shows like IMEX and EIBTM, but joint ventures at events like BTC, Confex, Conventa, EMIF…..could well be the answer to soaring MICE exhibition inflation.

New events seem to pop up like mushrooms. And I sometimes wonder if there will be enough exhibitors and real buyers to go around, but that’s a story for another time…Anyway, I hope we will be seeing a strong DC team as part of the Brussels stand at EMIF 2012. It could certainly do with some good old American pzazz….

More Powerful Partners?

Rumours were flying around EMIF about other potential Power Cities – Singapore, Dubai, Johannesburg, Moscow and Beijing were all mentioned. Brussels-DC will have to be quick. There are not many major cities left which do not already form part of an alliance of one kind or another.

Just last week came the news that Durban has joined the elite Future Convention Cities Initiative (FCCI) which now comprises Abu Dhabi, London, San Francisco, Seoul, Sydney & Toronto. There’s some pretty hard competition out there.

Watch this space!

BT