In 2023, almost five thousand professional events were held in Prague, attended by almost 700,000 people. In an international comparison, Prague also landed in the sixth place in the ranking of the most sought-after meeting destinations in the world. It surpassed cities such as Madrid, Seoul, London, Berlin, or Tokyo.
“In terms of the number of delegates, we are at almost 97% of 2019’s performance, but in terms of the number of events, we are only at 82%,” says Roman Muška, Managing Director of the Prague Convention Bureau. “These data only confirms the trend of recent years, when fewer meetings and conferences are held, but with a much higher turnout of delegates. In our statistics we see that the number of events attended by 500 or more delegates has increased year on year. At the same time, we see an increase in the average length of an event, mainly due to a sharp increase in the number of meetings that last four or more days and a decrease in the segment of shorter, mostly two-day, events.”
More International Meetings
According to the Prague Convention Bureau data, the number of international meetings and conferences in Prague has increased by 54% year-on-year, thus balancing the proportion of international (49.3%) and local events (50.7%). „In the long term, most events have been coming from the European continent (88%). However, if we focus on individual countries, in 2023, the United States of America returned to the top spot of source countries after four years, followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Belgium,” Roman Muška explains.
In international competition, Prague still holds its position among the most sought-after meeting destinations in the world. In the ranking, compiled annually by the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) on the basis of the number of meetings with international rotation and participation of more than 50 delegates, Prague ranked sixth globally this year, and within Europe it defended its fifth place. Although year-on-year, the Czech capital hosted 4% more association events that met the ICCA criteria, Prague was dethroned from the global top five by the Asian meetings champion Singapore, which climbed from 13th to second place in 2022.
