New ECM Meetings Statistics Report points out more meetings in European cities in 2018

European Cities Marketing recently published its 9th edition of the ECM Meetings Statistics Report, helping Meetings Industry professionals as they seek to anticipate future trends in meetings activity. The Report points out that European cities hosted more meetings in 2018, but with less participants and shorter duration.

Published yearly, the report is a result of the cooperation between European Cities Marketing and its member cities. With statistics drawn from a sample of 41 cities, ECM presented a new report with a full database of more than 260,000 recorded meetings among which more than 56,000 meetings for the year 2018.

Overall, there is a growth of 2.9% in the number of meetings between 2017 and 2018. However, the number of participants decreases by 3% and number of participant days goes down by 5%. This implies that, in average, there were more meetings in 2018, but welcoming less participants and lasting less time.
This year’s report shows a similar division of national and international events among the two segments (corporate and non-corporate). Compared to 2017, we see a slight decrease in the number of corporate meetings and a 12.2% decrease in terms of participants whereas the non-corporate segment demonstrates an increase in number of meetings (+9.6%) and participants (+4.6%).
Trends this year also show that smaller corporate meetings are increasing and unusual venues (i.e., museums) are becoming more popular.

Petra Stušek, European Cities Marketing President, said “In the bigger picture, international meetings and events have become instrumental for destinations – cities and nations – to manifest their business clusters, their science and research communities and their cultural scene for global audiences. Meetings do give much more to our cities and the greatest value arising from meetings is not only numbers but also the benefits beyond simply spending-based impacts: the quality of the professional, business, academic outcomes they deliver. It is no longer just about the hotel bednights that the meetings generate. It is about hosting the meetings with purpose and legacy. It is about connecting the destination to the world.”

The ECM Meetings Statistics Report 2018-2019 is the culmination of the collective effort of the Meetings Industry representatives who have pooled resources, collected data, shared information and provided highly informative and practical case studies during conferences, meetings and through ECM research newsletters. Some cities started to collect Meetings Statistics as a direct result of this ECM initiative. ECM and its Research & Statistics Knowledge Group is committed to using this project as a way of continuously improving the collection and analysis of Meetings Statistics, providing added value for members and ever-more robust research methodologies.

The main goal of this study is to go further than the current rankings published by the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) and the Union of International Associations (UIA), which focus only on international non-corporate meetings with specific criteria. The ECM Meetings Statistics Report presents figures on corporate and non-corporate meetings whether they are national or international events.

All ECM members have exclusive access to the complete ECM Meetings Statistics Report with all the graphs and analysis.

**ENDS**

European Cities Marketing is a non-profit organisation improving the competitiveness and performance of leading cities of Europe by providing a platform for convention, leisure and city marketing professionals to exchange knowledge, best practice and widen their network to build new business. European Cities Marketing is promoting and linking the interests of members from more than 115 major cities in 39 countries.

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