Top Destinations for International Association Meetings
May 9, 2017The number of international association meetings continues to double every 10 years. ICCA captured 12,212 rotating international association meetings taking place in 2016, which is an all-time record for ICCA’s annual snapshot of immediate past year’s meetings data, and 136 additional meetings compared to 2015.
More than five decades of doubling every 10 years.
This was another decade of great success for the sector as ICCA identifies more than double the number of association meetings in a decade: from just under 6,000 in 2006 to more than 12,000 in 2016.
This means that the trend of exponential growth, as identified in ICCA’s advocacy report “A Modern History of International Association Meetings: 1963-2013,” published at ICCA’s 50-year anniversary in 2013 (available on www.icca50.com — downloaded from the ICCA website alone more than 35,000 times), continues to apply: The number of association meetings continues to double every decade.
ICCA’s researchers also spotted an additional 710 meetings for 2015, and 524 for 2014. The ICCA Association Database now includes 20,000 regularly occurring meeting series, 220,000 meeting editions and 11,500 international associations.
2016 city rankings: Paris reclaims the top spot.
Paris, No. 1 in 2014, takes over first place again with 196 meetings in 2016 — one more meeting than last year’s No. 1 Berlin. Even though the order is quite different, this year’s top five cities were also represented in last year’s top 5. Vienna climbs two places to second, and Barcelona remains third. Berlin drops from first to fourth place and London remains fifth. Singapore is the first Asian city jumping one place from seventh to sixth. Madrid dropped two places from a shared fifth in 2015 to a shared seventh in 2016. Newcomers in the top 10 compared to last year are Amsterdam, 12th last year and now sharing seventh place with Madrid, and Seoul jumping from 13th to 10th. Like last year, Lisbon is ninth.
City/Number of Meetings in 2016
1. Paris, 196
2. Vienna, 186
3. Barcelona, 181
4. Berlin, 176
5. London, 153
6. Singapore, 151
7. Amsterdam, 144
Madrid, 144
9. Lisbon, 138
10. Seoul, 137
11. Prague, 126
12. Bangkok, 121
13. Dublin, 118
14. Copenhagen, 115
15. Beijing, 113
16. Budapest, 108
17. Buenos Aires, 103
18. Stockholm, 101
19. Hong Kong, 99
20. Rome, 96
2016 country rankings: France climbs one place.
The top 10 is made up of the same countries as last year, with some minor shifts and one newcomer on a shared 10th place. U.S.A. remains No. 1 with 934 meetings in 2016; 9 more than in 2015. Germany remains second and The United Kingdom remains third. France and Spain swap places: France is now fourth and Spain fifth. Italy and Japan remain sixth and seventh, while Japan now shares seventh place with China-P.R., which is climbing one place. The Netherlands drops one place form shared eighth to ninth and Canada remains 10th but is now joined on 10th place by Portugal, which was 12th last year.
Country/Number of Meetings in 2016
1. U.S.A., 934
2. Germany, 689
3. United Kingdom, 582
4. France, 545
5. Spain, 533
6. Italy, 468
7. China-P.R., 410
Japan, 410
9. Netherlands, 368
10. Canada, 287
Portugal, 287
12. Austria, 268
13. Republic of Korea, 267
14. Sweden, 260
15. Brazil, 244
16. Australia, 211
17. Poland, 195
18. Belgium, 194
19. Argentina, 188
20. Switzerland, 184