On 17 February, Salvador Pendon, chairman of the Costa del Sol Tourist Office, and Antonio Garcia del Valle, chairman of the tourism commission of Malaga Chamber of Commerce, together with Elias Bendodo, head of the tourism department of Malaga City Council, and the Chancellor of Malaga University, Adelaida de la Calle, presented the new phase of the "MalagaCon: Congresos Contigo" campaign in a press conference held at the Chancellor’s Building.
The main aim of this project – which was started up 18 months ago by the Costa del Sol and Malaga Convention Bureaux, with the support of other institutions such as Turismo Andaluz and the Chamber of Commerce – is to reinforce the city of Malaga’s brand image as a top MICE destination.
Over the past few months, this inter-institutional collaboration has gone a long way to heightening the awareness of those professionals capable of generating business for the city.
In addition to the aforementioned institutional collaboration, a taskforce was formed by representatives of the private and public sectors, Malaga University being one of the foremost members because of its potential to promote the city as a congress destination.
In addition, the UMA has maintained a high level of participation in the actions carried out in the framework of the MalagaCon: campaign from the very beginning, as well as having a broad range of facilities for hosting congresses (Chancellor’s Building, Main Lecture Theatre of the Faculty of Law, etc.).
The aim of this new phase of the campaign, in collaboration with the UMA, is to stay in touch with the university’s different departments with the capacity for hosting regional, national and even international congresses, as well as exploiting the contacts of its academic staff.
The campaign focused first on the health industry, with interviews with over 60 heads of department at both public and private hospitals. As a result of this round of contacts, 35 bids have been submitted by Malaga.
Together with the contacts made in the health industry during the first phase of the campaign, a number of visits was also made to several departments within the university, such as the Centre of Documentation, with which a bid was submitted for the congress of FESABID (Spanish Federation of Societies of Archivists, Librarians, Documentalists and Museology), which will attract delegates from all over the world when held in Malaga in 2011.
It is also important to mention the work carried out by the medical staff of the University Hospital, specifically those of the Microbiology Department, who will hold their congress in Malaga at the end of the year.
