Barcelona leads the Spanish international congress market, according to the latest ICCA ranking

The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) has presented its annual ranking, which measures global meetings activity. In its 2024 edition, the Spanish market is the third largest in the world and the second largest in Europe for this type of meetings, and Barcelona is the city that has hosted the most meetings in Spain.

 

To be counted by ICCA, meetings must meet specific criteria: be organized by international associations, rotate among at least 3 countries and be held at fixed intervals. The worldwide data are, in number of meetings organized according to ICCA criteria:

   1/ United States (709)

     2/ Italy (635)

    3/ Spainña (536)

    4/ Germany (491)

     5/ United Kingdom (481)

    6/ France (432)

     7/ Japanón (428)

     8/ Netherlands (295)

     9/ Portugal (290)

    10/ Canadaá (252)

 

As can be seen, Spain maintains its third position within the world meetings ranking as one of the most important markets.

At the city level, Barcelona moves up from fifth to fourth place, while Madrid is not in the top ten in terms of number of meetings hosted. Vienna leads the table, unbeatable, followed by Lisbon and Singapore.

1/ Vienna 2/Lisbon 3/Singapore 4/Barcelona 5/Prague 6/París 7/Seúl 8/Bangkok 9/Rome 10/Athens

Another aspect is the number of participants taking part in the meetings counted. Here the top city is Dubai, followed by Barcelona and Milan. In this ranking, Madrid appears in the top ten, occupying the ninth position.

 

  1/ Dubái 2/Barcelona 3/Milán 4/Bali 5/Melbourne 6/Washington 7/London 8/Cape Town 9/Madrid 10/Vienna

In addition;In addition, this ICCA report analyzes the causes or attraction strategies, beyond issues such as volume and price. It is worth highlighting aspects that have made a strong impact on the segment, such as sustainability, legacy, responsibility, contribution to the knowledge of the sectors involved, etc.

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