Vienna tops the city list as ICCA Rankings return

The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) has resumed publishing its rankings of congress destinations and Vienna is topping the list for the latest year under review – 2022. With 162 congresses, Vienna was No.1 in the City Rankings, with Lisbon holding 144 qualifying in-person meetings and Paris 134. Barcelona (133), Prague (129) and Madrid (128) followed in fourth to sixth places respectively. These numbers above represent meetings that took place on site in the meeting destination. Christian Woronka, director B2B management and head of the Vienna Convention Bureau, said: “I would like to thank our partners in the destination and, of course, my team at the Vienna Convention Bureau of the Vienna Tourist Board – with our combined efforts we were once again able to catapult Vienna to the top of the global congress destinations. We see this latest success as a mandate to continue working with full energy on Vienna’s future as a meeting metropolis. We currently have around 200 applications for congresses and corporate meetings. We are positioning the city as a modern meeting destination and a model city in the area of ecological and social sustainability.” In the ICCA Country Rankings, the USA leads the way with 690 meetings, followed by Spain (528), and Italy (522). Germany (484), France (472) and the UK (449) make up the top six. In the Asia Pacific City Rankings, Singapore led the way with 101 in-person meetings followed by Seoul (66) and Taipei (55). Then came Bangkok (50), Tokyo (39) and Kuala Lumpur (35). In the Americas, Buenos Aires headed the way with 66 in-person meetings, followed by Montreal (56) and Mexico City (53). They were followed by Vancouver (49), and Lima and Toronto on 38. ICCA said it had made the proactive decision to revert to normal rankings again based on the observation that approximately 85% of all meetings were held in-person, while also recognising that certain countries and territories were still working within the confines of Covid-19 restrictions. ICCA’s Research team said it had identified over 10,500 meetings, of which some 9,000 were held in-person, being either unaffected by Covid-19 or held in a hybrid format. ICCA CEO, Senthil Gopinath, said: “This is a tremendous undertaking by our team, one that is most welcomed by our members because the ICCA Country and City Rankings always generate huge industry interest. It’s heartening to see the drive towards in-person meetings is once more very strong and we predict this trend will grow throughout the coming year.” ICCA offers its members various tools to make the most of the statistical information. There is not a single country where at least one planned meeting was affected by the pandemic in 2022. The ICCA Database displays the status of each meeting, and in the relevant cases, shows the reasoning behind the organiser’s decision not to run a meeting as in-person.