Germany to Remain a Sought-After Business Travel Destination in the Future

Germany’s profile as a meetings and events destination is improving constantly -that is the opinion of 83 percent of the surveyed experts, 11.4 percent more than in the year 2007 of the Meeting & Event Barometer 2008.

Accessibility, hotel capacities and the image of the destination will also continue to be important factors in the future. Professional event planning and organization are becoming increasingly more important in order to develop a positive profile in the highly competitive market, this also opens up opportunities for differentiation for suppliers.

Companies will hold more meetings and events in external events facilities (convention centers, event locations and convention hotels): 77.9 percent (a plus of 6.3 percent) expect an increase in this area. In this context, organizers and experts allocate the greatest importance to event locations.

Convention centers are ranked in third place, but they achieved a substantial improvement in comparison with the previous year: whereas in 2007 only about 25 percent of the surveyed organizers and experts allocated a “greater importance” to them, in 2008 40 percent were of the opinion that convention centers are attractive locations for events and are gaining in importance.

Within the MICE market, organizers and experts expect there to be slight shifts in the importance of the various fields: thus, they predict that conventions in particular will become more important.

In the case of events, both groups expect a slight increase, while the importance that is allocated to incentives remains stable. As in the past, meetings exert a decisive influence on the MICE market even though –according to the survey of organizers and experts- their importance will decrease slightly while remaining at a high level.