A successful business conference – it’s still all about location

The obvious idea is that delegates will use generous expense accounts in local hotels and restaurants but there is also a more subtle motive behind a metropolis’s quest to get on the conference circuit and stay there.
By getting a steady flow of influential business people attending events in the locality, a city has the ideal opportunity to showcase itself as an attractive place in which to locate an office or factory. You can usually bet your life that each conference is preceded by the local mayor laying on a drinks reception for delegates with several of his municipal marketing lackeys featuring prominently.
Business conference organisers still tend to split their venues into 2 distinct groups ; where the aim of the event is strictly business, they will very often opt for run- of- the- mill metropolitan venues which are served by good airport and other transport links and which have an abundance of high quality hotel accommodation. Where there is a strong element of social activity like a sales incentive event, organisers will tend to look instead at rather more exotic locations even if they involve most delegates in making long haul flights. This may, for instance, explain why Thailand is playing host this year to slightly more major events than the whole of India which has a vastly bigger economy and business population.
The countries which seem to really score in the business conference stakes are the USA and the UK. They have far more events booked over the next 12 months than any other country. This is probably due to the fact that both countries have locations which are both modern and sophisticated as well as being important centres for business and tourism.
How useful it is for delegates to attend a conference in London which not only is a vital economic hub but also has the benefit of the West End theatre scene and quick access to some of the most famous golf courses in the World. Similarly, it’s amazing how much easier it is to drum up attendance for events held in California ( which holds more major conventions than Germany ) and Las Vegas. It would appear that a busy day in the conference hall somehow seems more tolerable if there are sun kissed beaches nearby or spectacular shows to look forward to at the end of each session. At the other end of the spectrum, a huge country like Russia perhaps unsurprisingly cannot stage as many major business conferences as relatively tiny countries like Austria and Switzerland.
It’s also not too surprising to find that the biggest sector when it comes to the main subject of upcoming events is Information Technology and Telecoms. The most likely reason is that the pace of change is so rapid in this industry that participants have to work hard to keep abreast of developments by attending as many trade get-togethers as possible.