1st ECM Meetings Statistics Report

What is the ECM Meetings Statistics Report?

The objective of the Report is to provide ECM members with a monitoring and benchmarking tool supplying practical and actionable intelligence on the volume and the economic significance of the convention business to city destinations. The report is based on a database containing information on more than 25,000 corporate and non-corporate meetings which took place in a sample of 39 European cities between 2009 and 2010. These meetings could be of international or national scope and all of them match the UNWTO definition.

Some key findings

The Report shows very clear-cut trends for the year 2010, which was by all accounts a year of economic recovery: between 2009 and 2010, the number of meetings increased by 9% and the number of participants by 11%.

This growth was not evenly spread between the various types of meetings. For instance, the activity of corporate meetings was up sharply (+10% of meetings and +30% of participants between 2009 and 2010), probably because this segment had been severely hit by the economic crisis in 2009. On the other hand, the number of non-corporate international meetings increased by a mere 2%. National meetings registered the highest growth rates: +14% for non corporate meetings and +15% for corporate meetings.

Within Europe, all geographical areas showed positive trends with the exception of Northern Europe, which registered a decrease in number of corporate and non-corporate meetings. In this area, the number of participants remained stable for non-corporate meetings and decreased by 4% for corporate meetings.

Looking to the future

Following the presentation of the preliminary results of the project during the ECM meeting and General Assembly in Lyon last June, it was unanimously decided that a second issue of the report should be put on the ECM Research & Statistics Group’s agenda for 2012. Until then, the group will help ECM members to collect good meeting statistics so as to have more cities joining the project next year and more exhaustive data. A special session dedicated to this issue will take place during the Bilbao meeting (18th November at 2pm).

The ECM Meetings Statistics Report would not have been possible without the cooperation of the cities who submitted their data, the hard work of Olivier Drouet (ECM, author of this report), the dedication of the Research & Statistics Group members (particularly Katrin Heintschel from the Vienna Tourist Board and André Barata Moura from Turismo de Lisboa) and the support of ECM, starting with its President Dieter Hardt-Stremayr. Let them all be thanked for their contribution.

Olivier Ponti

Manager Research & Development
Amsterdam Tourism & Convention Board
Chairman ECM Research and Statistics Group