The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) recently released their research results from 2016 and it was another groundbreaking year for associations meetings! Since 2006, the amount of association meetings has doubled to over 12,000 meetings in 2016! This is consistent with ICCA’s claim that the number of association meetings doubles every 10 years.
Along with general information about association meetings, ICCA has also released which cities and countries hosted the most meetings during the past year. Paris, the top city, hosted 196, Vienna 186, and Barcelona following with 181. The USA, with 934 meetings during 2016 steals first rank. Germany and the UK follow with 689 and 582 meetings, respectively.
This data is important and shows major trends in the industry, but should not be understood as destination rankings for the meetings industry as a whole! Meetings included in this research must be organized by associations, must be held regularly, have at least 50 delegates in attendance, and rotate between 3 or more countries. Complete rankings can only be provided when different meetings (such as corporate, intergovernmental and non-rotating) are also included in the research.
ICCA CEO Martin Sirk concludes: “The Information Revolution and Knowledge Economy are experiencing continuing exponential growth, so it’s hardly surprising that the entire association meetings community is responding in such a dynamic fashion. Traditional association meetings are growing strongly, but they are definitely no longer the only game in town!”
