CONFERENCE delegates have boosted Glasgow's economy by a staggering £1.2billion in the past decade.

 

Since it was set up 10 years ago, the City Marketing Bureau and its partners have secured more than 3300 domestic and international conferences.

During that time, more than 1.2million delegates have spent 3.8m nights in the city's hotels accounting for up to one in five hotel beds sold in Glasgow.

And today it revealed it had reported its best ever conference sales in the past financial year.

The Bureau, together with partners including the SECC, the universities, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, venues and hotels secured convention business worth £140m in 2014/15 - almost £2.7m of new business per weeks representing a year on year increase of 3%.

Between April 1 last year and March 31 this year GCMB's convention bureau, which competes worldwide to bring conference business to Glasgow, confirmed 504 new international and UK conventions through to 2022.

Among those secured during the period were the Congress of the International Academy of Pathology 2020, the European Society of Hypertension and the International Society of Hypertension's Joint Scientific Congress 2020 and the World Congress of Soil Science 2022.

In winning these meetings, the city beat off worldwide competition from Beijing, Singapore, Italy, Switzerland and Cancun in Mexico.

Earlier this year, Glasgow was voted the UK's Best Convention Bureau for the ninth year in a row - the only UK city to be awarded the accolade.

The prestigious annual poll collects votes from more than 4500 industry professionals through an independent audit with more than 13,000 votes cast across its categories.

City council leader Gordon Matheson, who is chairman of the Marketing Bureau, said: "We couldn't hope to celebrate our 10th birthday with better news - we have secured £1.2 billion of conference business with nearly four million hotel bookings, during a decade when global competition has been increasingly fierce.

"The figures are nothing short of remarkable and a huge vote of confidence for Glasgow. They underpin why we are not just the UK's conference capital, but one of the world's premier business tourism cities.

"This milestone achievement is testimony to the close partnership network that exists between the different players across our conventions sector, from our venues, especially the SECC, our five universities and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, to our hotels, restaurants, transport providers, local ambassadors and all the other conference service providers that consistently strive to ensure Glasgow maintains its position as a first choice, global meetings destination."

John Heeley, Visiting Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University and director of www.bestdestinationmarketing.com, said: "The convention department of Glasgow City Marketing Bureau - alongside Vienna Convention Bureau - is widely acknowledged by conference industry experts and practitioners as the best of their kind in Europe.

"The fact that GCMB knocks the spots off of other UK convention bureaux is confirmed by the M&IT awards, and its achievements in this field are down to the scale and quality of its marketing and sales operations, undertaken with a trademark city partnerships approach and a real hunger to succeed."

Mr Matheson vowed Glasgow would continue to work flat out to attract the world's top conferences to the city.

He said: "The past 10 years have been a huge success story for Glasgow during which we have welcomed the world's most esteemed minds to our great city and this achievement is the perfect springboard from which to ensure the next decade is as equally successful.

"Glasgow City Marketing Bureau has confirmed businesses on its books through to 2022 and is bidding for new conventions business as far out as 2024 - the most exciting thing about Glasgow is there is still a lot more to come."