The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA), the global community and knowledge hub for the international association meetings industry, has announced its annual statistics report, which is the most respected global comparison of destinations’ performance in attracting international meetings.
Year on year, ICCA has seen a promising consistent growth pattern in the association meetings market. ICCA’s 2019 statistics captures 13,254 rotating association meetings, the highest ever recorded annual figure in its yearly statistics, with an increase of 317 from last year’s record-breaking figures.
The ICCA Association Database now includes 21,000 regularly occurring meeting series, 260,000 meeting editions and 12,000 international associations.
ICCA CEO Senthil Gopinath said: “ICCA’s annual statistics report is one of few that compares destinations’ meetings-related performance on a global scale and therefore provides great insight into global trends in the meetings industry. Given the current circumstances, it is great to once again highlight the consistent growth in association meetings globally. These figures show the need and importance of face-to-face events, and consequently that the industry will be instrumental in the global recovery when the time is right.”
2019 City Rankings
Paris holds on to the coveted title and remains in the first position
In the number one spot in the ranking by number of association meetings in 2019, Paris ranked at top for the second year in a row, followed by Lisbon, the city with the highest increase in the number of events (+38) moving up 4 places from being 6th last year. Regular contenders of the top 5, Berlin (3rd), Barcelona (4th) and Madrid (5th), have made it once again, but Berlin and Madrid have swapped places from last years’ rankings.
Impressive newcomers to the Top 50 by number of meetings are Valencia (44 places higher) and Istanbul (40 places higher), respectively holding 48th and 44th position.
2019 Country Rankings
The U.S.A. in the top spot
Titleholder for the last two decades, the U.S.A., remains in the top country spot. The Top 20 remains relatively unchanged with some countries moving up or down one place. France moves up to take third position from Spain, who find themselves one position lower. Similar rank swapping of one position takes place between China-P.R and Japan, Portugal and Canada, Australia and the Republic of Korea, and Belgium and Sweden.
Only those meetings that meet ICCA’s stringent assessment criteria – rotating between at least three countries, have a proven attendance of at least 50 participants, and are held on a regular basis – are recorded within the global association’s annual statistics.
The full ICCA statistics reports are available now to ICCA members only in the ICCA Destination Comparison Tool. A public abstract of the report, including rankings for all countries and cities, will be released to the public in mid-June.
