Professor Greg Clark CBE shares his insight on the business of cities and how the industry must make more of an effort to stand out.
The meetings industry is growing, it is sophisticated and substantial and it has very broad and deep benefits for the places that host it. It has important linkages with other industries and it provides capabilities for many of the globalising and innovating sectors in the world today. But in the economic development strategies of the nations, regions, and cities that I work with, it is sometimes almost invisible.
There are at least seven major areas of high value impact that the meetings industry brings to any city. They are critical for cities to understand if they are to have any serious chance of leveraging the benefits that the industry can bring. Not doing so means substantial costs in missed opportunities and under-leveraged assets.
We are one third of the way through a 100-year cycle, starting in about 1980 and ending in about 2080, when two great trends are converging and synchronising. The first is Global Urbanisation. In that period the global population will shift from 20% to 80% urbanisation. In 2080, 80% of seven billion people will live in cities.
Second, the world population will by 2080, on average, have stabilised, and we will witness the end of the long cycle of global population growth of the past 300 years.
This has one big implication. What happens in the next 33 years will shape what happens for 100-200 years thereafter. The quest is on to make urbanisation work and achieve its promise.
Some cities will spend a great deal of time and money trying to incentivise job locations with tax subsidies, or recruit an R&D facility from a major firm, or entice a university to locate a school, or develop a cruise terminal, or encourage a holiday company to develop a tour. But they do not notice that there is another force active in their city that is already bringing decision-makers in large numbers in from medicine, science, pharma, energy, sport, fashion, digital media, housing, life style and other important sectors, into their city. That force is the meetings industry.
There are at least seven major areas of high value impact of a meetings industry for any city where the industry can contribute to city competitiveness:
1. Jobs, sales, and incomes
2. Taxes and revenues
3. Connectivity and accessibility
4. Internationalisation, open-ness, diversity, presence, and reach.
5. Amenities and facilities and place making
6. Identity, visibility, affiliation, and reputation.
7. Strategic alignment with, and reinforcing capabilities for, other dynamic sectors.
Misconceptions:
Meetings are seen as tourism. Economists took the view 40 years ago that tourism is a low value industry with only low productivity and poor paying jobs. Cities need entry-level jobs to support population growth. The ‘experience economy’ generates benefits.
The meetings sector is seen as a market and not as an industry. Locals benefit but don’t recognise it. More needs to be done to educate local communities about the benefits the industry brings.
The cities don’t see clear evidence of amenities, multipliers, and other indirect benefits that the meetings industry brings. They need rigorous citywide and comparative evidence. But they also need to see that it drives short-term outcomes (jobs, taxes, sales, incomes) and longer term impacts.
The ‘feedback loops’ are too closed and too complex for the cities to see them. The meetings industry tends to communicate within its own circles.
