Cardiology congress ESC, European Society of Cardiology, is coming back to Amsterdam in 2023 after ten years. Before the Corona crisis, this congress attracted approximately 30,000 participants from over 140 countries. Participants can choose to follow the conference digitally.

„We are very aware of the impact of Europe’s largest medical conference and are committed to making the ESC Congress 2023 a success”, says Maurits van der Sluis, COO RAI Amsterdam.

Attracting the ESC Congress is in line with the new conference plan of the city of Amsterdam. “Amsterdam will invest 3.7 million euros in the acquisition of conferences over the next four years. The ESC offers a great opportunity for collaboration with universities and companies in the field of Life Sciences & Health in Amsterdam, and specifically in the field of heart research”, says councillor of Amsterdam Victor Everhardt (Economic Affairs).

The conference plan is meant to ensure that Amsterdam becomes one of the more important conference cities in Europe. In recent years, Amsterdam has been hovering around the top 10 of the International Congress and Convention Association’s ranking, behind cities such as Paris, Barcelona, Lisbon or Copenhagen. Amsterdam wants to bind non-commercial conferences in the areas of Life Sciences & Health, Tech, sustainability, FinTech and the creative industry to the city. Amsterdam will facilitate conference visitors in connecting with companies, universities, colleges and research centres in the region, in order to stimulate collaboration and innovation. Conferences thus create social impact and added value for residents and businesses, according to RAI Amsterdam.

RAI Amsterdam just introduced a new digital magazine, CONNECT Amsterdam – a magazine for relations, customers, suppliers and neighbors and anyone who is interested in Amsterdam and the Amsterdam event location. The magazine is available via this link (https://www.rai.nl/en/magazine/

Also RAI Amsterdam published its Annual Report 2020. Since June 2020 the convention centre has been one of the largest COVID testing facilities in the Netherlands, welcoming over 400,000 people who came by bike, on foot and by car to be tested by the municipal health service GGD. This figure looks set to be exceeded in 2021 with the expansion of the rapid test facilities, and the RAI has been active as a vaccinating location since January too.

With a more horizontal and compact organisation the RAI continued to work on projects which could be launched during the COVID crisis, such as The Stage is Yours and RAI Studios. A digital proposition was developed for organising and facilitating online and hybrid events so that meetings could take place both during and after the pandemic.