Budapest among the best conference cities

Budapest is not only among the cheapest cities in Europe, but it is also one of the most popular conference destinations. The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) published the list of the most popular conference cities of the world, Turizmus.com reports. The number of international conferences (based on data from 2017) worldwide increased by 346 compared to a year before (2016).

More than 1100 companies and organisations from a 100 different countries are members of the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA). ICCA looked at how many international conferences were held in 2017, and built a list based on which city hosted the most meetings. ICCA counted only those international conferences that were held in at least three cities in rotation and had an attendance number of at least 50 people.

12,558 international association conferences were organised worldwide in 2017 which is more than ever before.

ICCA reports that especially the number of conferences organised by various professional associations increases and there are more and more conferences held each year.

Interestingly, the top 5 cities remained the same since 2016, but they switched places. Here are the top five cities where the most conferences were held in 2017.

1. Barcelona (195 conferences)
2. Paris (190 conferences)
3. Vienna (190 conferences)
4. Berlin (185 conferences)
5. London (177 conferences)

Budapest managed to move from the 16th to the 12th place. Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Prague (Czech Republic) also moved up on the list. Tokyo (Japan) and Montreal (Canada) managed to be on the 2017 list. However, these cities did not make it to the list in 2016.

6. Singapore (160)
7. Madrid (153)
8. Prague (151)
9. Lisbon (149)
10. Seoul (142)
11. Buenos Aires (131)
12. Budapest (128)
13. Hong Kong (119)
14. Dublin (117)
15. Copenhagen (115)
16. Amsterdam (112)
17. Bangkok (110)
18. Tokyo (101)
19. Stockholm (97)
20. Montreal (96)
21. Rome (96)

Regarding the countries, the United States has a quite stable first place with a total number of 941 conferences, while Germany at the second place is way behind with 682 conferences. Denmark is the “newcomer” at the 20^th place, while Argentina could not make it to the list in 2017. It comes as no surprise that Hungary did not make the countries’ list either.

1. United States of America (941)
2. Germany (682)
3. United Kingdom (592)
4. Spain (564)
5. Italy (515)
6. France (506)
7. Japan (414)
8. China (376)
9. Canada (360)
10.  The Netherlands (307)
11.  Portugal (298)
12.  Austria (281)
13.  South-Korea (279)
14.  Australia (258)
15.  Sweden (255)
16.  Brazil (237)
17.  Switzerland (230)
18.  Poland (216)
19.  Belgium (208)
20.  Denmark (203)

Source: www.turizmus.com