Top destinations for association meetings

Association meetings and their extended planning cycles are key goals for global destination marketing organizations. They are also a key way for the Convention Bureau to track success. Last week at IMEX Frankfurt, ICCA held its most international conference in 2024 for the ranking of countries and cities.

According to the latest report from ICCA, based on 2024 data, the United States continues to rank the highest, with the position since at least 1995. Several Western European countries, along with Japan and Canada, also accounted for the top 10. The famous transition race went down to sixth for the fourth time, probably due to Paris’ ability to host the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Vienna returned to the top of the ICCA city rankings, a position that also held two years ago, Lisbon second only to a conference. Singapore fell from second to third. Paris experienced its biggest decline, from No. 1 to No. 6, which may be due to hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics. Prague dropped a position while Seoul rose three points and Rome two. Bangkok and Athens entered the top ten, replacing Madrid (11th) and Dublin (20th).

The pandemic recovery of Kanbump continues

The latest report from the International Congress and Conference Association (ICCA) believes that the number of international association meetings in 2024 reached 11,099, a 9% increase from 2023. A positive step, but still significantly below the peak of 13,269 meetings in 2019, suggesting that more than 2,000 meetings have been lost. The 2024 figures are similar to the total number of conferences calculated in 2012, with the conference being 11,150. The 17.8% gap is large. Even though the average meeting between 2016 and 2019 was between 12,752.5, the shortage was 13.9%.

According to ICCA estimates, the economic impact of these conferences is huge, with a direct economic impact of $11.6 billion. Participant spending has risen 24% since 2015, from $2,518 to $3,127, although it actually fell from $3,832 in 2022, while $3,146 in 2023 has fallen. Although it is obviously positive. This is obviously positive, but this growth is slightly lower than global inflation, up 25% over the same period.

From the source of economic impact, large meetings (more than 1,000 attendees) account for only 8% of the total meetings, but account for $6.9 billion (59.4%) of the impact. Medium-sized meetings (150-999 attendees) accounted for 53% of all meetings, contributing $5.5 billion (47.4%), while smaller meetings (50-149 attendees) accounted for 39% of the meetings, but only $884 million (7.6%) of the total impact.

Limited data focus

Understanding ICCA methods is crucial to explain these rankings. The data included only meetings organized by associations that rotated between at least three countries with more than 50 participants. This approach, while consistent since the inception of ICCA, does not include a large number of conference segments. For example, many American associations rotate between destinations on the East Coast, Midwest and West Coast without crossing international borders, thus not considering these large conferences. Likewise, non-rotation association meetings are not included, which means that large-scale events such as CES are also omitted.

Vienna’s outstanding city shows this limited view that the rankings offer. ICCA attributed 154 meetings with 101,886 participants to Vienna in 2024, with 781 international conferences with 260,000 participants.

The Alliance of International Associations (UIA) offers another perspective. It calculates meetings of any size, with or without regular rhythms, whether they rotate or not. It also considers intergovernmental organizations and association-driven meetings. Their latest rankings based on 2023 data, namely the rankings for 2024 will be released in the near future – Belgium ranked 708th meeting, followed by the United States (633) and Japan (488). Brussels led the city to hold 620 meetings, followed by Vienna (298) and Tokyo (226).

Alternative ranking

The ICCA itself shares other rankings in its report. One ranking considers the direct economic impact of meetings held in cities above 2024. The ICCA calculates this effect based on the average registration rate of the city and then uses it as a multiplier to calculate the total direct spending. It estimates that the registration rate accounts for an average of 22% of the direct economic impact per participant.

Looking at the biggest earners, Barcelona is clearly the winner, attracting about $360 million in direct spending, much higher than the second place in London ($289 million) and the third place in Singapore ($290 million).

Ranking of cities through direct economic impact

1. Barcelona, ​​Spain (US$360 million)
2. London, UK (US$298 million)
3. Singapore (US$290 million)
4. Madrid, Spain (US$288 million)
5. Vienna, Austria (USD 247 million)
6. Milan, Italy (US$237 million)
7. Amsterdam, Netherlands (USD 230 million)
8. Bangkok, Thailand (USD 221 million)
9. Copenhagen, Denmark (USD 209 million)
10. Rome, Italy (US$200 million)

Destinations by meeting size

Different perspectives on ICCA rankings emerge when focusing on the size of the conference. For gatherings of more than 1,000 delegates, South Korea rose to fourth place (from 12th overall) and Australia climbed to ninth place (from 17th). Instead, Germany fell to fourth (from fourth) to seventh. In this large conference category, Lisbon leads the city, followed by Barcelona and Singapore. Vienna is the highest-ranking city in the entire city, falling to fourth place, tied with Seoul and Milan (14th in total). It is worth noting that Cape Town (7th) and Melbourne (8th) performed much better at the big conferences compared to their overall position (35th and 31st respectively). Analyzing medium or small meetings alone does not make a significant change from the full ranking. But the progress in the medium-sized categories of Athens, Madrid and Tokyo, while Brussels and Stockholm rank higher when considering only smaller meetings.