Good ideas catch on
Given the labyrinthine seminar and meetings organisation market and the overwhelming range of venues on offer, only those organisers that can come up with financially viable and creative concepts stand a chance of survival.
Hotels, special event locations, civic and congress centres and arenas are proliferating in Germany - and all are vying for custom and attention on the fiercely competitive meetings market. As if that were not enough, owners of country estates, monasteries and museums are entering the fray in a bid to boost their business with meetings and smaller congresses and to breathe new life into their old, attractive but expensive-to-maintain buildings. In Germany alone there are some 10,000 purveyors of all manner of special event locations, so the German Convention Bureau (GCB) has calculated. Even industry insiders like Marcus Wiesner, managing director of UVT, an event agency in Bad Kreuznach, lament the statistical discrepancies and the absence of reliable market data. His company - along with convention bureaus, tourist associations, and representatives of the trade press such as TW Tagungswirtschaft - Convention Industry, which is also published by the Deutscher Fachverlag - help meeting planners find their way through the mass of offers available. To hold one's own as a supplier, no effort should be spared to build up a unique USP as a means of standing out from the crowd. Exhibition companies are also eager to cut a slice of the meetings cake. "Northern lights" such as Bremen, for instance, are doing their utmost to build further on their position as meetings destinations. A recent study by the DWIF German Economic Institute for Tourism Research bears out these endeavours: one-day business trips to the city-state of Bremen grew almost fivefold between 1993 and 2004 (2004: 7.7 million trips) and, with an increase of 381 %, are 158 percentage points higher than the German average. Since the new exhibition halls were built in 1997 the city has risen from newcomer to an important exhibition and congress player in the north for congresses, meetings and events with up to 7,500 attendees. The new meeting planner from Bremen Tourist Centre gives an overview of what the city-state can offer congress, incentive and exhibition organisers. In recent years Bremen's exhibition company and the convention bureau at Bremen Tourist Centre have beefed up their canvassing for big congresses, and the BTC annually helps with the organisation of between 50 and 60 events of varying sizes.
Alliances like the cooperation between the exhibition company and the BTC are one way of gaining a foothold in the meetings market. Other companies try with new service offers for their customers. Best Western, for instance, became the first hotel group to offer a dedicated online portal for event planners this year, promoting their hotels and meeting venues on a road show throughout Germany. But the emphasis was not on size or financial masterstrokes. On the contrary, Gabriele Schulze, managing director of Best Western Hotels Deutschland, Eschborn, assisted by Günter Mainka, managing director of the Berlin-based company Twilight Events, showed around 700 meeting professionals how to tread new paths in the meetings market without enormous expense. Hard and fast practical tips rounded off the presentations, and participants could experience for themselves how to make a day spent at a seminar entertaining yet informative.
m+a report Nr.6 / 2006 vom 22.09.2006
m+a report vom 22. September 2006