ECM Summer School now qualifies for Certified Meetings Professional credits…

 European Cities Marketing (ECM ) annual Summer School for the meetings industry ended this year on a particularly high note – the course is now so well respected that future graduates from the school can earn credits towards the highly sought after CMP certification !

Pier Paolo Mariotti, Head of the Summer School faculty and Meeting Manager of EURAC Convention Center in Bolzano said : “I am truly delighted. The entire faculty has been working very hard to achieve this major goal. The Summer School, an ECM initiative, has been an essential step in building industry careers through education over the past 26 years. Certified Meetings Professional (CMP) is highly respected and universally recognized and so the news of CMP credits allows us to take future summer schools to the next level and increase demand. It’s a win-win.”

The 26th Summer School was held this year in host city Dubrovnik from August 25-29, 2012 and was a sell-out success with 61 fortunate students attending.

Ann-Pascale Mommerency from Kortrijk Regional Convention Bureau (Belgium) said : “As new small Convention Bureau we were delighted to get the opportunity through Tourism Flanders to attend the ECM Summer School in the beautiful city of Dubrovnik. The Summer school gave us the chance to meet colleagues from 24 countries and this resulted in an interesting exchange of information and a mixture of visions from people that were all busy in the meeting industry. The workshops and the presentations that we needed to do were a very good practice for us. We welcomed the comments of experts, we try for sure to learn from the output that was giving to us and furthermore we retain that network and time management is crucial in this sector.”

The ECM Summer School curriculum is tailor-made to cover all sectors of the conference industry (convention bureaux, tourist offices, congress and convention centres, hotels, airlines, DMCs, PCOs and Meeting Planners). The faculty consists of top industry experts who share their collective knowledge and experiences about trends in the marketplace, about the structure of the convention business, and above all about how to win business and pursue a successful career in one of the most dynamic and commercial sectors of the tourist industry : Andrea Bauer (Vereint), Julia Bierwirth (CIM), Nalan Emre (IMEX), Paul Flackett (IMEX), Airy Garrigosa (Barcelona), Elisabeth Hansa (Congress Centre Mariazeller Europeum), Cain Leathem (GB Fitness), Rémy Cregut (Montreux Music & Convention Centre), Christian Mutschlechner (Vienna Convention Bureau), Michel Neijmann (IAPCO), Denis Speet (ICCA), Mathias Sondermann (USI), Tina Walspurger, (USI), Anne Wallin Rodven (Oslo Convention Bureau), led by the course leader Pier Paolo Mariotti, CMP CMM.

Pier Paolo went on to say : “I am looking forward to the next summer school which will be held in Istanbul from August 24-28, 2013. I have inspected the facilities and we are working already on the programme and the speakers. It is sure to be a big success and probably over-subscribed with the CMP credits news. We are ready for applications…”

For more information and pictures, please contact:
Flavie Baudot, press@europeancitiesmarketing.com,
+33 380 56 02 00