Paris takes top spot in conventions ranking

Paris has retained top spot in the International Congress and Convention Association’s (ICCA) table showing the number of association meetings hosted by cities around the world.

In the annual results, which provided “few major shocks”, Vienna swapped places with Madrid to make up the top three, with Berlin and Barcelona swapping places at four and five respectively.

To be included in ICCA’s list, meetings must be held on a regular basis, have at least 50 delegates, and rotate between at least three countries.

London moved up one position to sixth place and was followed by Singapore, Amsterdam, Istanbul and Prague.

ICCA CEO Martin Sirk said: "What was striking in this year’s exercise is actually the very large number of meetings we identified over the last twelve months for the year 2013 – more than 600 meetings were identified worldwide, and we’re pretty certain we’ll have equal success in finding more qualifying 2014 meetings over the next twelve months."

Table 1: Top 20 city ranking by number of meeting organised in 2014