The best year in history

Barcelona is experiencing its best year ever for trade fairs, congresses and conventions. According to La Vanguardia, there is life in Barcelona beyond the Mobile World Congress (MWC), a lot of life. For years the Catalan capital, taking advantage of its international appeal, its know-how and experience in organising major events, its excellent hotel facilities, competitive prices and magnificent communication infrastructures, has become one of the world's major capitals for this type of business tourism. 2017 will be excellent and the following years look set to be even better. This is the forecast made by the Barcelona Turisme Convention Bureau, the office integrated in the city's tourism promotion consortium, and corroborated by data provided by Fira de Barcelona. For the past fifteen years, Barcelona has established itself in the top five European cities in terms of the number of meetings and participants, and is the only one of all the metropolises competing for the privileged positions in this ranking that is not a state capital. One of Barcelona's strengths as a trade fair city is the internationalisation of the participants in the congresses that take place in the city. Approximately three out of every four congress participants come from abroad, and of these, 30.5% come from outside Europe. The hegemony that Barcelona is acquiring as a venue for major medical meetings is striking. In fact, most of the major congresses to be held this year and in the coming years in the Catalan capital are in this field. But it is not only in the health sector that Barcelona is making things difficult for its rivals. It is also gaining ground in the field of industrial trade fairs. Another area in which Barcelona is growing is incentive and corporate travel. In the absence of definitive results, last year the city hosted more than 600 meetings of European companies, especially from the United Kingdom, Germany and France. And to confirm definitively that even distance does not diminish Barcelona's attractiveness, one more fact: last year a dozen Australian and New Zealand companies rewarded their executives and workers with corporate or incentive trips to this city.

Let the party continue...