PREDSEDOVANJE EU 2008 EU Presidency 2008 PREDSTAVITEV ...

Conference Towns in the Spotlight
Some at Home and
some just over our Border
The concept of the
conference centre is
rooted in a paradox
of the late twentieth
century. On one hand,
we can see that the
possibilities of the
electronic exchange
of information have
already called the
traditional pattern of
work into question but,
at the same time, we
can see growth of global
events that bring people
together due to their
common knowledge
or professions. From
a social viewpoint,
the need for meetings
and direct contact is
greater than ever before.
Sir Norman Foster, a renowned
British architect from the Foster
& Partners studio, created,
among other things, a meetings
venue project in Valencia and the
Scottish Exhibition and Convention
Centre in Glasgow.
This is also
happening in our region
Contemporary communication
technology is leading us more and
more towards work in isolation
but, contrary to this, inquiries
for new venues for direct ‘faceto-face’
discussions are getting
much stronger. Conferences and
expert meetings are today an international industry and meeting
venues are an important acquisition for places entering the
competitive environment of the global market. As they vie for the
attention of potential meeting planners, numerous destinations can
boast new or improved/expanded meeting infrastructure. Investment
into new meeting venues or proposals for future ones have resulted in
an almost world-wide pandemonium in the last decade and we should
be especially aware of its development in Asia. The old continent is not
static however, despite the fact that we have seen a slight decline for
some years in the total share of international meeting events. Quite
close to us, a new medium-sized meeting venue opened in the centre
of Salzburg a few years ago, while the construction of larger meeting
venues is planned in the near future in Zagreb and Budapest.
The search for the definition of a ‘conference town’
And what exactly is a ‘conference town’? Can something as complex as
a ‘conference town’ simply appear? I remembered that the European
Federation of Conference Towns (EFCT), which recently merged with
European Cities Tourism (ECT) and now bears the name of European
Cities Marketing, could offer me a possible definition. Upon its
establishment a good sixty years ago, the EFCT set up a conditional
membership prescribing that a city must offer appropriate meeting
space for at least 300 people set up theatre-style, either in a meeting
venue or hotel. It should also have high quality overnight accom
modation for the same minimum number of participants, good traffic
access, experience in the area of business tourism, the liberal ability to
cross a national border and should include references of at least five
implemented international meetings.
If I touch on the history of specialist ‘auxiliary organisations’ for
marketing the meetings facilities of cities, which originated at local
level before national level, I should mention as a point of interest that
the first convention bureau in the world was set up in Detroit back in
1896 when a group of local businessmen realised how profitable
organised group meetings were for their region. The United States surpassed
Europe in this activity for several decades, with Europe finally
awakening in the 1960’s, initially through investment in
infrastructure. The Finnish (originally Helsinki – Finland, 1974) and
London (1980) convention bureaus are among the oldest and things
got moving a lot later in Slovenia – in Ljubljana, just over a decade
ago but with effects only felt at national level three years ago.
Google rules!
As I was pondering where to find a definition of a ‘conference town’,
I typed the terms ‘city for congresses’, ‘city for conferences’ and
‘city for meetings’ into Google, merely out of curiosity. Limiting the
search to Europe, a slew of quite similar introductory descriptions
of numerous destinations appeared, describing all their distinctions,
with almost identical descriptions in the case of two cities.
In any case, we see expressions such as ‘ideal, first-rate, excellent...
city for conferences / congresses / meetings’, which offers
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