Singapore is the highest-ranking Asia Pacific city in the latest International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) worldwide city rankings.
The report also shows that the number of international associations meetings held annually has doubled over the past decade.
Cities
The 2016 listing, released earlier this week, ranks cities according to the number of international meetings held over the year.
Paris claimed the top spot, having hosted 196 international meetings last year. Seoul also made it into the top 10 from the Apac region, with Bangkok, Beijing and Hong Kong coming in the top 20.
The ranking for the top 20 cities is as follows:
- Paris
- Vienna
- Barcelona
- Berlin
- London
- Singapore
- Amsterdam / Madrid
- Amsterdam / Madrid
- Lisbon
- Seoul
- Prague
- Bangkok
- Dublin
- Copenhagen
- Beijing
- Budapest
- Buenos Aires
- Stockholm
- Hong Kong
- Rome
Countries
While the US claimed the number one spot again in the top countries listing, China and Japan came in at joint seventh from the Apac region.
Global picture
ICCA recorded 12,212 international association meetings taking place in 2016, which is 136 more than recorded in 2015 and an all-time high.
This is more than double the figure from 10 years ago, when ICCA recorded just under 6,000 meetings in 2006.
This means that the trend of exponential growth, as identified in ICCA’s advocacy report A modern history of international association meetings: 1963-2013, published in 2013, continues to apply: The number of association meetings continues to double every decade. The report can be downloaded here.
CEO’s comments
ICCA CEO Martin Sirk said: “Once again our report provides clear evidence of the resilience and long-term continued growth of the international association meetings sector.
“Anecdotally, we hear that it is not just the traditional association meetings business that is in a healthy state: new association-type events are being created by groups of scientists and doctors, destinations are designing and hosting their own world-class STEM meetings and festivals (science, technology, engineering, maths), online discussions are migrating to the real world of concrete face-to-face interactions, and even corporate events are evolving into community gatherings of suppliers, clients, partners, investors, users, and academics, blurring the lines between the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors.”
“The Information Revolution and Knowledge Economy are experiencing continuing exponential growth, so it’s hardly surprising that the entire association meetings community is responding in such a dynamic fashion. Traditional association meetings are growing strongly, but they are definitely no longer the only game in town!”
The full ICCA statistics reports are only available to ICCA members via its online Destination Comparison Tool. Comprehensive rankings for all countries and cities will be released to non-ICCA members in mid-Jun.
