Talking about regeneration

What does Vien­na mean to you? It might be the city of Mozart, Beethoven and Mahler. It might be the home of the Wiener Schnitzel and Sacher­torte. But, for the almost 3,000 asso­ci­a­tion and cor­po­rate events that were held in Vien­na dur­ing 2010, it’s the per­fect place to do busi­ness.

Busi­ness events are one of the cor­ner­stones of the Vien­nese econ­o­my, says Chris­t­ian Mutschlech­n­er, direc­tor of the Vien­na Con­ven­tion Bureau. The sheer num­ber of events put the city at the top of the glob­al con­ven­tion rank­ings com­piled by the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress and Con­ven­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (ICCA). But, just like a vis­i­tor to one of the city’s famous cafés, Vien­na is hun­gry for more.

Accord­ing to Mr Mutschlech­n­er, it’s all about con­stant renew­al of the old to cre­ate a more attrac­tive envi­ron­ment for events. There’s a feast of infra­struc­tur­al devel­op­ment tak­ing place – not just venues, but hotels (one con­nect­ed to the city’s tech­nol­o­gy muse­um), a new rail­way sta­tion lay­out to improve vis­i­tor access and a new uni­ver­si­ty adja­cent to the Vien­na Messe exhi­bi­tion cen­tre.

Vien­na is by no means the only place to realise the regen­er­a­tive impact of events. Seoul’s city gov­ern­ment is keen to tap into the high-spend­ing busi­ness tourist and sees cor­po­rate meet­ings as a key dri­ver of growth. It has embarked on a series of infra­struc­ture and beau­ti­fi­ca­tion projects, such as the Han Riv­er Renais­sance: clear­ing the Han Riv­er and its trib­u­taries of indus­tri­al pol­lu­tion, turn­ing its islands into wildlife sanc­tu­ar­ies, cre­at­ing parks along its banks, and recre­ation­al and sport­ing facil­i­ties in the area.

It’s all about con­stant renew­al of the old to cre­ate a more attrac­tive envi­ron­ment for events

Accord­ing to Arnal­do Nar­done, ICCA pres­i­dent, con­ven­tion cen­tres “become mag­nets that attract pri­vate-sec­tor invest­ment in hotels, restau­rants and oth­er ancil­lary busi­ness­es, many of which are big local employ­ers. We have seen this pat­tern repeat­ed from Puer­to Rico to Pat­taya, from Copen­hagen to Cape Town. Often a con­gress cen­tre will be the ‘anchor’ devel­op­ment around which a whole sec­tion of a city is regen­er­at­ed”.

In San Diego, a con­ven­tion cen­tre built in 1989 has trans­formed a run-down area of the city. “Down­town San Diego wouldn’t look any­thing like it does today if it wasn’t for the con­ven­tion cen­tre,” says Jer­ry Sanders, the city’s may­or. Car­ol Wal­lace, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive of the San Diego Con­ven­tion Cen­tre Cor­po­ra­tion, adds: “Pri­or to 1989, few peo­ple want­ed to come down­town because it was an area of urban blight. It is now one of San Diego’s pre­miere din­ing, shop­ping and enter­tain­ment dis­tricts that tourists and res­i­dents flock to year round.” What’s more, the high­er-lev­el busi­ness events that the con­ven­tion cen­tre has host­ed have prompt­ed some com­pa­nies to relo­cate to San Diego.

It is not the only city that has become skilled at attract­ing inter­na­tion­al meet­ings to encour­age this kind of inward invest­ment. “Sin­ga­pore, for exam­ple, attracts events on biotech­nol­o­gy and IT specif­i­cal­ly because it will bring in ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists and enable local busi­ness­es to attract more invest­ment,” explains Mr Nar­done.

Busi­ness events can also lead to social improve­ments, says Mr Mutschlech­n­er. “The Euro­pean Con­gress of Car­di­ol­o­gy brought 30,000 par­tic­i­pants into Vien­na and the city admin­is­tra­tion cre­at­ed a pub­lic day where locals could have heart tests. This is a per­fect com­bi­na­tion of the city’s com­mit­ment to pub­lic health and the Euro­pean Soci­ety of Cardiology’s will­ing­ness to give some­thing back to Vien­na and its inhab­i­tants.”

Har­ness­ing the full regen­er­a­tive pow­er of busi­ness events requires the com­ing togeth­er of organ­is­ers, politi­cians, busi­ness lead­ers and aca­d­e­mics. “One of the rea­sons the San Diego Con­ven­tion Cen­tre was a suc­cess is because we gar­nered the sup­port of local gov­ern­ment offi­cials and are con­tin­u­al­ly edu­cat­ing them about the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits con­ven­tions gen­er­ate for the local econ­o­my,” says Ms Wal­lace.

As Mr Nar­done puts it: “Des­ti­na­tions that under­stand the direct, high per-capi­ta ‘busi­ness tourism’ spend, the oppor­tu­ni­ties for infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment and the broad­er social val­ue of host­ing such events, stand a far bet­ter chance of extract­ing the most return from them.”