Istanbul 8th top destination for int’l business congresses: Poll

According a written statement by the Istanbul Congress and Visitor Bureau (ICVB), Turkey’s largest city hosted a total of 148 international congresses last year, helping it climb one place from 2014. 

“Since 2010 Istanbul has maintained its place in the top 10 as one of the leading destinations for international congresses,” said the head of the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce and ICVB, İbrahim Çağlar, as quoted by Anadolu Agency. 

Turkey ranked 18th in the world and 11th in Europe by hosting 211 congresses by the end of 2015. The top nine countries all remain in that top echelon, with the U.S. retaining top ranking and Germany strengthening its second place in the ICCA list. United Kingdom climbed one place to number three at the cost of Spain, which dropped one place. France, Italy, Japan and China retained fifth and eighth place respectively. The Netherlands climbed one place, now sharing eighth place with China. Canada was the only newcomer in the top 10.

ICCA captured a record number of 12,076 rotating international association meetings taking place in 2015, the largest number of association meetings collected in one year, with 571 more meetings than in 2014, according to the ICCI website. 


Berlin tops list

Berlin climbed three places to become the new number one city at the cost of Paris, which took number one spot last year and is now second. Although the order is different, the top seven in the list is made up of the same cities as last year. Barcelona climbed two places to rank third and Vienna dropped two places to fourth. London climbed one place to rank fifth, shared with Madrid, which dropped two places. Singapore remained seventh. Istanbul climbed one place to eighth. Lisbon and Copenhagen became newcomers in the top ten, both climbing three places to ninth and tenth respectively.


Second tier cities ‘growing faster’

In the city ranking, the “winners” are the cities with the smallest losses, or with a very small growth as new number one city Berlin has only two more meetings compared to 2014, while Paris has 28 fewer meetings than in 2014, Vienna has 24 fewer and Madrid 29 fewer, said the ICCA. 

Barcelona is two down and London is five up, added. 

“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,” stated the association.