UK - The organisation responsible for promoting Edinburgh as a global destination is bidding to bring £66m of business events and conferences to the city.
Ten new events were booked between 1-18 April, worth an estimated £5.5m to the economy and attracting up to 3740 delegates.
The largest of the newly-confirmed events is a meeting of the European Society of Condensed Matter Materials, organised by the Institute of Physics. The four-day event will be held at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (pictured). Scheduled to be held on 3-7 September 2012, it will attract up to 1200 delegates and is valued at £2.3m.
The Edinburgh Convention Bureau (ECB) is helping persuade the organisers of 89 planned association meetings to choose Edinburgh as the host destination.
The chief executive of the ECB, Sue Stuart, said the bureau had a very good start to the year. “The number of events we are bidding for is slightly ahead of this time last year. We have a track record of converting eight out of ten enquiries into confirmed bookings and we aim to continue that success rate,” she said.
She added that the events being targeted by the ECB have a wide variety of subject matter ranging from renewable energy to infectious diseases, capitalising on Edinburgh and Scotland’s reputation in the fields of energy, medicine, life sciences, computing and electronics.
“We have increased our research resource to identify more professional association meetings suitable for Edinburgh in order to sustain the growth of business tourism within the local economy,” she commented.
A two per cent increase in the value of business tourism won with the assistance of the ECB has been set for 2010/2011, which would inject £75.7 million into the local economy.
