New data shows the north of Italy is running ahead of the rest on the country when it comes to conference organisation.
In 2014 more than 25 million people took part in more than 308,000 between events and conferences organised in around 6,000 facilities throughout Italy.
More than half of these were in the north of the country.
The fresh figures are revealed in the 2014 Monitoring Project on Italian Conferences and Events, the research project presented in Rome during a meeting at ENIT headquarters (the National Agency of Tourism), promoted by Federcongressi&eventi and produced by the High School of Economics and International Relations (Aseri–Alta Scuola in Economia e Relazioni Internazionali), coordinated by Roberto Nelli of Università Cattolica in Milan.
The data collection – carried out between June and October 2015 by means of a questionnaire distributed online to 5,786 venues – unveils that of the 308,912 events held in Italy during 2014, 57.5% took place in the North (which concentrates 50.3% of the venues), 26.1% in the centre and 16.4% in the south and on the islands. As for the 25,534,011 participants, the highest percentage was registered in the north (61.7%), followed by the centre (27.1%), whereas the south and the islands hosted 11.2% of the total. The north stands out for the number of participants per event (89) which is higher than the national average.
The survey shows that 60% of the total events in Italy with 56% of total participants have been “local”, that is with participants – excluding speakers – mainly coming from the region where the conference venue is located; 31% of the events and 33% of attendees, who were from a larger National territory, i.e. with participants – excluding speakers – mostly coming from other regions; 9% of the events and 11% of participants were classified as International, hosting participants from abroad in significant numbers.
