The U.S.A. is the number one country measured by number of international association meetings organised per year. However, when taking a second look at individual city rankings, the U.S.A. has a lot to gain in terms of this market sector.
For the last 10 years, and in fact ever since ICCA first started to collect data on international association meetings, the U.S.A. has always been the number one country measured by number of meetings organised per year.
With 623 meetings in 2010, the U.S.A. is by far the number one country measured by number of meetings organised in 2010, followed by European countries as Germany (542 meetings in 2010), Spain (451 meetings), United Kingdom (399) and France (371).
However, in the last 10 years the market share of U.S. meetings in the ICCA database has dropped from 9.1% in 2001 to 6.8% in 2010. In the last year alone, the gap between the U.S.A. and Germany, number two country since 2004, shrunk from 137 meetings in 2009 to 81 meetings in 2010.
The ICCA city ranking shows that U.S. cities are ranked relatively low in the worldwide charts.
Table 1: ICCA U.S. cities ranking measured by number of international association meetings organised in 2010
USA rankingWorldwide rankingCityNo. meetings143Boston, MA43249Washington, DC36356Chicago, IL32462San Francisco, CA30568New York City, NY26686Philadelphia, PA21796Miami, FL198103San Diego, CA189112Portland, CR1610129Los Angeles, CA1411146Atlanta, GA12Seattle, WA1213159Pittsburgh, PA11Las Vegas, NV11Honolulu, HI11
This reflects the fact that very few destination marketing organisations in the U.S.A. are proactively targeting this sector. The strong national rankings is primarily due to two factors: the sheer size of the US economy, and the large numbers of US volunteer leaders in leadership positions within their associations who are launching successful bids.
This means that U.S. cities have an opportunity to make huge progress in the growing market of international association business, if they decide to proactively focus on this sector.
Despite economic turbulence the number of international association meetings continues to increase significantly. This year the ICCA Data researchers have identified 9,120 events which took place in 2010, 826 events more than were identified last year and an all-time record! Partly this reflects the strength of the association meetings market despite the recent economic downturn; partly it is thanks to a record number of ICCA members sending us their calendar information to help identify new events.
ICCA CEO Martin Sirk says: “Some of this significant increase in numbers of association meetings in 2010 is certainly due to our continued investment in research and the great feedback from ICCA members, but it seems clear to me that we’re in the midst of an extended period of astonishing dynamism: 2009 and 2008 were similarly buoyant in terms of new association event creation. This has been driven by the acceleration of new scientific and technological developments, and the need to discuss these complex changes face-to-face. Anyone who wants to understand what the Information Revolution really looks like just needs to consider how the international association meetings sector is evolving.”
