Adelaide, Daejeon, Hyderabad and Toulouse sealed the alliance at the 50th ICCA Congress held in Leipzig in October 2011.
With over 60% of global conventions and information exchanges being science-related, a four city alliance designed to share information, develop networking opportunities and promote the destinations to the genre has been formalised between the Convention Bureaux of Adelaide (Australia), Daejeon (South Korea), Hyderabad (India) and Toulouse (France).
lnaugural "Science Alliance" president Mr Chae from Daejeon said "global competition is fierce; however each of the four destinations in our alliance has a common synergy with strong connections to science and research institutions and local ambassador programmes."
"There are already a number of global alliances in existence including ’Best Cities,’ ’Future Cities’ and ’Energy Cities’," said Mr Chae. "It makes good business sense given the number of meeting industry events based around science and research to unite our resources, draw on the strengths of each destination and form the ’Science Alliance’ to attract such events," he said.
The strengths of the individual destinations will of course be highly beneficial to associations and institutes seeking destination options for their events, with shared intelligence and resources offering advantages on many levels to organizers.
A business and marketing plan is currently being prepared and will be the focus for 2012, with meetings scheduled for IMEX and ICCA between the partners. Information sharing and co-op marketing activities will follow shortly after. In coming years, additional partners may also be invited to assist with expanding the objectives of the alliance.
In addition to their science and research commonalities, further synergy is achieved by the partners in terms of the size of the destination and their respective bureaux. Whilst each of the alliance members has already hosted a number of events, the collaboration and shared experience as a result of this will assist with the preparation of future bids.
The ’Science Alliance’ agreement was signed at the 50th ICCA Congress held in Leipzig in October 2011, with the inaugural general meeting hosted in Daejeon that same year.
During their trip, members made the most of the opportunity to tour Daejeon’s key science and research institutions, including the KARI Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), Electronics Communications Research Institute {ETRI), and Dunsan Oriental Hospital of Daejeon University.
