ICCA 2015 rankings released: Berlin new No. 1 city.
ICCA captured a record number of 12,076 rotating international association meetings taking place in 2015; the largest number of association meetings collected in the year after the meetings took place ever, and 571 additional meetings compared to 2014.
These numbers reconfirm the consistent growth pattern in the association meetings market as identified in ICCA’s 50-year report (publicly available on www.icca50.com). The ICCA Association Database now includes 20,000 regularly occurring meeting series, 220,000 meeting editions and 11,500 international associations.
City rankings: Berlin new number one
Berlin climbs three places and is the new number one city, at the cost of Paris, which took number one spot last year and is now second. Even though the order is quite different, the top seven is made up of the same cities as last year. Barcelona climbs two places and is third and Vienna drops two places and is now fourth. London climbs one place and is now number five, together with Madrid, which dropped two places. Singapore remains seventh. Istanbul climbs one place to eighth. Lisbon and Copenhagen are newcomers in the top ten, both climbing three places to ninth and tenth respectively.
Table 1: Top 20 city ranking by number of meeting organised in 2015
RankCity# Meetings in 2015Change in Rank1Berlin195+32Paris186-13Barcelona180+24Vienna178-25London171+1Madrid171-17Singapore156-8Istanbul148+19Lisbon145+310Copenhagen138+311Prague123-112Amsterdam120-413Brussels117-2Seoul117+115Hong Kong112+116Bangkok103+1317Rome99+118Dublin97+619Beijing95-5Budapest95-3
Second tier cities are growing faster
In the city ranking, the “winners” are the cities with the smallest losses, or with a very small growth; new number one city Berlin has only two more meetings compared to 2014, while Paris has 28 meetings less than in 2014, Vienna has 24 and Madrid 29 less. Barcelona is two down and London is five up and Madrid is 29 down.
Since the total number of meetings in 2015 has increased, this means that the meetings are more equally spread out amongst destinations, and relatively smaller, second tier destinations are becoming more and more successful at attracting association meetings.
Country rankings: United Kingdom climbs to number 3
The top nine countries all remain in that top echelon, with USA retaining top ranking and Germany strengthening 2nd place. United Kingdom climbs one place to number three at the cost of Spain which drops one place. France, Italy, Japan and China-PR retain the same positions as last year. The Netherlands climbs one place, now sharing 8th place with China, and Canada is the only newcomer in the top 10.
Table 2: Top 20 country ranking by number of meeting organised in 2015
RankCountry# Meetings in 2015Change in Rank1USA925-2Germany667-3UK582+14Spain572-15France522-6Italy504-7Japan355-8China-PR333-Netherlands333+110Canada308+211Brazil292-112Portugal278+313Republic of Korea267+514Austria258-315Australia247-216Belgium216+4Sweden216-218Turkey211+119Denmark204+320Switzerland194-4
ICCA identified 94 additional international association meetings taking place in the USA in 2015, eight additional meetings in Germany and 39 additional meetings in the United Kingdom. Spain dropped six and France dropped 11 meetings.
The full ICCA statistics reports are only available to ICCA members in its online Destination Comparison Tool. Comprehensive rankings for all countries and cities will be released to non-ICCA members and the media on 20 June.
Published
22/05/2016
