WORLD – The USA continues to lead the way in the 2011 International Congress and Convention Association rankings (ICCA), which have been released.
The rankings, which profile meetings organised by international associations which take place on a regular basis and rotate between a minimum of three countries, are a mixed bag of movers and shakers.
The top 10 countries showed little change, with the top six repeating their rankings, led by the USA, Germany and Spain.
The Netherlands and Austria appeared at ninth and 10th respectively, taking the place of Switzerland, which dropped from 10th to 12th, and Japan, which in the aftermath of cancellations due to the earthquake and tsunami, understandably dropped from seventh to 13th place.
The USA saw by far the biggest jump in the number of events held, up by 136 to a new record 759 meetings.
In the city rankings, Vienna retained its number one status, and below it Paris overtook Barcelona in the second and third place battle. The biggest climber in the top 10 was London, with the 2012 Olympics effect and Excel London helping pull it up from 14th to seventh. Beijing, which led the way among the fast growing BRIC destinations climbed from 12th to 10th.
“There are always going to be short-term competitive changes to annual rankings, some caused by external factors and some by marketing successes,” said ICCA CEO Martin Sirk.
“The most important thing to note is that international association meetings continue to be in tremendously good health when compared with the overall situation in the global meetings industry. We’ve seen consistent annual growth in the number of international association meetings throughout the last few years of global economic instability, something no other sector can claim, even though we’re also hearing about increasing challenges in raising sponsorship amongst a sizeable minority of organisers.”
More than 10,000 regularly occurring events were identified by ICCA members for the 2011 study, a rise of 800 on 2010.
The new top 20 country rankings are:
- USA – 759 meetings
- Germany – 577
- Spain – 463
- UK – 434
- France – 428
- Italy – 363
- Brazil – 304
- China – 302
- Netherlands – 291
- Austria – 267
- Canada 255
- Switzerland – 240
- Japan – 233
- Portugal – 228
- Republic of Korea – 207
- Australia – 204
- Sweden – 195
- Argentina – 186
- Belgium 179
- Mexico – 175
The top 20 city rankings:
- Vienna – 181 meetings
- Paris – 174
- Barcelona – 150
- Berlin – 147
- Singapore – 142
- Madrid – 130
- London – 115
- Amsterdam – 114
- Istanbul – 113
- Beijing – 111
- Budapest – 108
- Lisbon – 107
- Seoul – 99 and Copenhagen – 98
- Prague – 98
- Buenos Aires – 94
- Brussels – 93 and Stockholm – 93
- Rome – 92
- Taipei – 83
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