ICCA announces Top cities and countries for association meetings in 2016

International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) announced top cities and countries for the international association meetings in 2016. The number of international association meetings continues to double every ten years. Paris reclaims the top spot in the 2016 city ranking, while USA ranks at top in the 2016 country ranking.

ICCA captured 12,212 rotating international association meetings taking place in 2016, which is clearly an all-time record for ICCA’s annual snapshot of immediate past year’s meetings data, and 136 additional meetings compared to 2015.

ICCA identifies more than double the number of association meetings in a decade: from just under 6,000 in 2006 to over 12,000 in 2016.

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 spotParis, number one in 2014, takes over first place again with 196 meetings in 2016 – one more meeting than last year’s number one Berlin. Even though the order is quite different, this year’s top 5 cities were also represented in last year’s top 5. Vienna climbs 2 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 drop 2 places from a shared fifth in 2015 to a shared seventh in 2016. Newcomers in the top 10 compared to last year are Amsterdam, twelfth last year and now sharing seventh place with Madrid, and Seoul jumping from 13th to tenth. Like last year, Lisbon is ninth.

Table 1: Top 20 city ranking by number of meetings organised in 2016

Rank	City	# 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 placeThe top 10 is made up of the same countries as last year, with some minor shift and one newcomer on a shared tenth place. U.S.A. remains number one 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 tenth but is now joined on tenth place by Portugal, which was twelfth last year.

Table 2: Top 20 country ranking by number of meetings organised in 2016

Rank	Country	# 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

Whilst these ICCA rankings provide some evidence of a city or country's relative performance, it is only when all data on all the meetings taking place in a destination are considered - corporate, intergovernmental, non-rotating, etc - that a true, complete picture can be seen. ICCA always advises its members to collect their own statistics on all meetings they organise, and provide a full picture on their performance.

ICCA CEO Martin Sirk commented: “Once again our report provides clear evidence of the resilience and long-term continued growth of the international association meetings sector. Anecdotally, we hear that it is not just the traditional association meetings business that is in a healthy state: new association-type events are being created by groups of scientists and doctors, destinations are designing and hosting their own world-class STEM meetings and festivals (science, technology, engineering, maths), online discussions are migrating to the real world of concrete face-to-face interactions, and even corporate events are evolving into community gatherings of suppliers, clients, partners, investors, users, and academics, blurring the lines between the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors. The Information Revolution and Knowledge Economy are experiencing continuing exponential growth, so it’s hardly surprising that the entire association meetings community is responding in such a dynamic fashion. Traditional association meetings are growing strongly, but they are definitely no longer the only game in town!”