This year marks the 10th anniversary of the marketing consortium, SevenCenters of Germany.
Since 2002 the group, which includes ICC Berlin, Internationales Congress Center Berlin, DüsseldorfCongress, Congress Frankfurt, Congress Center Hamburg, Congress-Centrum Koelnmesse – Köln-Kongress, Internationales Congress Center München and ICS Internationales Congresscenter Stuttgart, has worked to attract convention business to the major cities.
In January 2012, Andrea Bisping, Head of the ICM, took the Chair. He said: “It’s my aim to positively influence the perception of Germany as a meeting destination.”
Cologne
Cologne (pictured), situated on the river Rhine, is the fourth largest city in Germany and one of the nation’s media, tourism and business hotpots.
Cologne Convention Bureau recently joined forces with the European Institute for the Meetings Industry (EITW) to produce an annual report on the trends in the city’s convention market.
During 2010, 42,750 events, attended by 3.3m participants, took place in Cologne. There was growth in comparison with 2009, in both the number of events and the number of participants.
Hotel bookings resulting from the conventions market increased on average by 50 room-nights to 971 room nights per hotel per month. Assuming 4.57 million overnight stays in Cologne hotels in total in 2010, these projected overnight stays would make up 27.6 per cent of hotel tourism in Cologne and produce a turnover of about €160m.
Cologne’s largest convention centre, Koelnmesse, hosts 1,900 conferences annually, is the fifth largest event centre in the world and is within one hour’s flying time from 180m Europeans. It has
11 halls with 284,000sqm of space and an outdoor area offering 100,000sqm of space for events.
Frankfurt
The host destination of meetings industry exhibition, IMEX, Frankfurt is the centre of
the FrankfurtRhineMain region and home to Messe Frankfurt.
Messe Frankfurt is Germany’s largest trade fair organiser with an annual turnover of €448.3m (US$598m).
In 2010, Messe Frankfurt organised 87 trade fairs, of which more than half took place outside Germany. Extending over 578,000sqm, the Messe Frankfurt fairground currently holds 10 exhibition halls plus the associated Congress Centre which has 80 convention and meeting rooms with a total seating capacity of 22,000, as well as additional exhibition areas. The largest space can accommodate 9,500 people, while the largest conference hall has space for 2,200.
Messe Frankfurt recently purchased a new congress centre in Frankfurt’s Europaviertel district in order to grow its congress space offering.
Messe Frankfurt’s President and CEO, Wolfgang Marzin, said of the acquisition: “The new congress centre marks an important expansion of Messe Frankfurt’s range in this event segment.
“Existing space has been booked up and we are now tapping into additional customer segments for one of our core activities in the high-growth congress and convention sector.”
Berlin
Some 115,700 conventions, meetings and events took place last year in Germany’s capital, Berlin, which is a two per cent increase year-on-year.
These were attended by 9.7m delegates, which is seven per cent more than in 2010 and the number of room nights rose to 6m, a nine per cent increase.
Visit Berlin says these numbers mean the convention industry generates more than a quarter of all hotel room nights in Berlin.
By way of economic impact, €1.8bn were generated last year by meeting and convention delegates visiting Berlin; a 10 per cent increase compared to the prior year.
The meeting and convention industry secured 34,000 full-time jobs, an increase of 2,000 compared to 2010.
Visit Berlin’s CEO Burkhard Kieker says the convention industry is an important pillar of Berlin’s business community. “We will continue to do our utmost to further strengthen the convention destination.
“The BER airport is an important stage on Berlin’s way towards a world metropolis in order to secure more international conventions for the German capital. New air connections will contribute towards turning Berlin into an even more successful meeting and convention destinations.
“In order to be able to continue to grow, the number of possible event locations must likewise be increased. A new demand arises here,” he adds.
In 2011, the international percentage of congress participants amounted to 19 per cent. The number of national delegates rose to 81 per cent, a one per cent increase year-on-year.
A particularly large number of meetings and conventions took place in Berlin for the pharmaceutical and commerce sectors, each accounting for 10 per cent.
Dusseldorf
The Congress Center Düsseldorf (CCD), which hosts 2,000 events and 400,000 visitors a year, is located in one of Germany’s most important business and scientific hubs.
Düsseldorf is second only to Frankfurt as Germany’s major banking and financial centre, with numerous international companies headquartered there, including 450 Japanese firms.
Set on the banks of the Rhine and linked to Messe Düsseldorf exhibition centre, the venue, which is one of Germany’s largest congress centres, is three kilometres from Germany’s third largest airport and 5km from the Old Town. The complex can accommodate up to 15,000 delegates at one time.
Upcoming events at the CCD include the International Rotating Equipment Conference for Pumps and Compressors for the second year in September 2012 and the Sports Business Summit in February 2013, also returning for another year.
There are 300 hotels in Düsseldorf offering 23,000 hotel beds in the city and another 54,000 in the region. An alliance between Düsseldorf’s hotels, the DüsseldorfCongress and Düsseldorf Marketing and Tourism, provides organisers of large-scale events with a contingent of hotel rooms that can be booked at firm prices, even years ahead of time.
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany and is considered to be one of the most innovative metropolitan regions in Europe. Around 160,000 companies produce a gross domestic product of €90bn, which corresponds to that of Finland.
The region has an industrial reputation as the ‘cradle of the automobile’ with a long history in the automotive sector. This has helped it to win large conferences in this sector. Names like DaimlerChrysler, Porsche, Neoplan, Bosch, Mahle, Mann and Hummel, Behr, Beru, Eberspächer and Bertrandt have all had a long tradtion in Stuttgart and together with research and development companies invest more €13 million here each day. This 10 per cent of the overall spend in all of Germany.
The International Congress Center Stuttgart (ICS), with 9,500sqm of meeting space, opened its doors for business four years ago.
Since its opening the centre has hosted such events as the CDU Federal Party Convention, the German Savings Bank Conference and the Forum of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Baden-Württemberg.
At the end of January, the Auto Motor Und Sport magazine invited the who’s who in the automotive industry to the award presentation ceremony for The Best Cars of 2012 at the ICS.
Munich
The city of Munich is synonymous with its annual gathering in celebration of beer, Octoberfest. However, the city is also famous for its hosting of the 1972 Olympics.
On 26 August, the Munich Olympic Park, which can be used for large-scale events, will celebrate its 40th anniversary with an open house.
In terms of conference spaces, the Dolce Munich-Unterschleissheim hotel is one of the largest in Munich, offering more than 4,000sqm of space. The Bayerischer Hof has 1,700sqm of event space with a capacity of 2,150 delegates, reception-style. The Kempinski Hotel Airport Munich
has 1,400sqm of event space and a maximum capacity of 1,000 delegates reception-style.
After successfully hosting the cardiologists’ European congress in 2004 and 2008, Munich will again be welcoming the 2012 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) with over 30,000 delegates in August.
Due to the co-operation and joint promotion efforts of Munich Tourist Office and Messe München, International Congress Centre (ICC) Munich, the Bavarian capital was able once more to attract this highly regarded international congress highlight of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), winning through against competition from a number of other European destinations.
Hamburg
Hamburg is built on an area covering 291.5sqm and 1.7m people live in Germany’s second-largest city. Brands such as Beiersdorf, Airbus, Hapag Lloyd, Helm, Montblanc, Olympus and Tchibo are the defining feature of Hamburg’s business world.
In the first half year of 2012 alone, Hamburg’s main conference space Congress Center Hamburg (CCH) will welcome three first-time events, with an expected attendance of 16,500 delegates. At the beginning of May the 10th German Senior Citizens’ Convention, will bring an expected attendance of 10,000 delegates.
The CCH has 23 conference rooms seating 12,500 people, plus 10,000sqm of exhibition space and sits adjacent to exhibition space Hamburg Messe, which welcomes12,000 exhibitors a year, presenting their wares to 900,000 international visitors.
The second half-year at CCH is characterised by 11 medical conferences with a total of 26,000 participants. Fifty-five major events are already booked in the period up to 2016, including the World Lions Convention in 2013.
The owner and operator of CCH, Hamburg Messe und Congress, has increased its revenues to €58.5m in the lower yield year of its biannual convention cycle by focusing on third-party events.
The figure is up 7.5 per cent on the comparative year 2009.
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