AMSTERDAM – The United States and Germany retain their rankings as the leading country destinations for association events.
The ICCA rankings cover meetings organised by international associations which take place on a regular basis and which rotate between a minimum of three countries.
The data represents a “snapshot” of qualifying events in the ICCA association database as sampled on May 12,2009.
ICCA’s association database is designed as a sales and marketing resource for its members to target future international association meetings, which is why it does not include one-off events or those which do not move between locations.
This year the ICCA data researchers have identified 7,475 events which took place in 2008, a rise of approximately 800 over 2007.
Partly this reflects the strength of the market, partly it is thanks to a record number of ICCA members supplying their calendar information to help identify new events.
As has been the case since 2004, the United States and Germany are the number one and two countries respectively measured by the number of international meetings organised in 2008.
Spain (3) and France (4) had a considerable increase by amount of meetings compared to 2007: 40 and 79 respectively.
For the first time in three years, Vienna shares the top with Paris as the most popular city.
Singapore finished in fourth place with 118 meetings. Bangkok was 18th with 71 meetings.
Barcelona in third place had an increase of 30 meetings over 2007.
ICCA is now working on the details behind these headline results. The full ICCA statistics report for 2008 will be released early June.
