Rankings. The ICCA rankings cover meetings organised by international associations which take place on a regular basis and which rotate between a minimum of three countries. The data represents a “snapshot” of qualifying events in the ICCA Association Database as sampled on 9 May 2011. ICCA’s Association Database is designed as a sales and marketing resource for its members to target future international association meetings, which is why it does not include one-off events or those which do not move between locations.
This year the ICCA Data researchers have identified 9,120 events which took place in 2010, 826 events more than were identified last year and an all-time record! Partly this reflects the strength of the association meetings market despite the recent economic downturn; partly it is thanks to a record number of ICCA members sending us their calendar information to help identify new events.
ICCA CEO Martin Sirk says: “Some of this significant increase in numbers of association meetings in 2010 is certainly due to our continued investment in research and the great feedback from ICCA members, but it seems clear to me that we’re in the midst of an extended period of astonishing dynamism: 2009 and 2008 were similarly buoyant in terms of new association event creation. This surely has to be driven by the acceleration of new scientific and technological developments, and the need to discuss these complex changes face-to-face. Anyone who wants to understand what the Information Revolution really looks like just needs to consider how the association meetings sector is evolving.”
