The thirteenth meeting of the Strategic Alliance of the National Convention Bureaux of Europe was staged in Saint Petersburg’s Hotel Indigo on 1 October 2019.

The Alliance aims to boost partnership between convention bureaux within Europe to maintain and strengthen its long-term standing as the number one association meeting destination in the world. The objectives set by its members include the promotion and support of knowledge sharing within the organisation, simplification and reinforcement of approach to key markets, as well as comprehensive market research through joint activities.

In recent years the Alliance considerably improved its internal cooperation, with Memorandum of Understanding signed and joint budget created during its earlier Vienna-set meeting in February. In turn, Saint Petersburg hosted an election of Alliance’s spokesperson. Furthermore, representatives of Germany CB (Matthias Schultze, Managing Director) and Holland CB (Eric J.A.M. Bakermans, Director Marketing Meetings, Conventions & Events NBTC Holland Marketing) were re-elected for a two-year term. In addition, the 2019 budget was distributed, with 6,500 EUR allocated for the purposes of creating a new website of the Alliance.

The second part of the meeting in Saint Petersburg was focused on workshops intended to work out the organisation’s course of action and define its needs.

Aneta Książek, Head of Poland Convention Bureau – Polish Tourism Organisation, assured that ”As its founding member, Poland Convention Bureau - POT tries to participate in all research projects and meetings of the Alliance which follows the objective of reinforcing cooperation between European countries. By being involved in actions aimed at working out joint standards of the European industry, we emphasise Poland’s position as an attractive region for meetings and business events in the international arena. We are different and complement one another, have various resources at our disposal, operate in different structures for decades or only several years. We share experience gained in our homelands, devise lines of action, as well as define the needs of our European organisation”.

The national convention bureaux meet twice a year, with the next event scheduled to take place in Oslo on 30-31 January 2020.

The list of Alliance members includes: Austria (Vienna), Belgium (Flanders), Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.