Heroes emerge in Austria

It was an event that attracted 1,700 journalists to town and many, many, more thousands of fans, a good percentage draped in national regalia intent on having a good time in Austria’s capital city. The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) 2015 came to Vienna, 23 May, and the city rose to the occasion, using the contest – beamed to over 200m homes worldwide – as an international platform to showcase its event hosting capacity. Vienna is up again to No.2 city in the new ICCA rankings and is clearly back in its best conference and major event-winning form. The national tourism board linked with the Vienna’s destination marketing organisation to push their slogan for encouraging visitors ‘Now or Never’. It was a case study of how to win hearts and minds, with key national and city tourism stakeholders working hard to provide a united, professional front. I was part of a media contingent that got to experience many of the incentives ideas on offer in Austria. Indeed the ESC itself showed clips of the performers enjoying some typical Austrian experiences in the pre-show days in the run up to the big night at the Stadthalle. We had the Albanian entrant dousing fires with the local fire brigade and Polina Gagarina from Russia (the eventual runner up) browsing the Swarovski crystals, while the Wild Card entry from Australia got the opportunity to surf on some local waters. As well as excellent meetings industry marketing experience, our Austrian colleagues have good form organising Europe-wide big events, witness the European Football championships in 2008. The weather was a lot better, however, for the football fans that thronged the fan zones seven years ago. A downpour in Vienna dampened the square in front of the City Hall for the Eurovision army of visitors, if not the enthusiasm or the technical abilities on show. Local venues got well into the Eurovision spirit, with the Leopold Museum hosting a ‘Nul Points’ expo of all Eurovision’s many losers (including the UK’s Gemini duo from 2003 – look it up on Youtube if you could do with a chuckle). In addition to the three major city congress centres: The Hofburg Vienna, The Austria Center Vienna and Messe Vienna, those in town for Eurovision also had the chance to visit the Spanish Riding School and the University  of Economics new €200m campus. One man behind the logistical effort to stage Eurovision 2015 was Michael Draxler, the CEO of Stadt Wien Marketing. His team had to be on their toes initially, amid bidding pressure from fellow Austrian city Graz, once Conchita Wurst had clinched the contest for the country last year. Draxler’s team’s effort and story of a year-long campaign of hard work is testament to many in the European events industry who work behind the scenes, professionally and remorselessly for their destinations, keen to pull off the big event and to show their venues and towns and cities in the best light possible. The Swedish winning entry for ESC 2015, Heroes, by Mans Zelmerlow, provided an apt description of all those behind the Vienna scenes working hard to deliver the event goods. Austria – douze points!