The Strategic Alliance of the National Convention Bureaux of Europe: A Network Finding Creative Solutions

The Strategic Alliance of the National Convention Bureaux of Europe was founded by Matthias Schultze and Eric Bakermans. The alliance is a network of national destination marketing organisations focusing on strengthening Europe’s position as a leading destination for international business events. Founded in 2014 with nine initial countries, it has grown to include 29 member organisations across Europe.

The primary purpose of the alliance is to create beneficial working relationships among European national convention bureaux and to maintain and strengthen Europe’s long-term standing as the world’s top destination for all business events. Furthermore, the alliance promotes and supports knowledge sharing among members, simplifies and strengthens approaches to key markets, and conducts comprehensive market research through joint activities.

Among the alliance’s activities and initiatives, they meet twice a year in rotating host destinations. The network has launched the joint website convention-europe.com to provide resources and communication channels for customers, suppliers, and partners. The alliance conducted research projects, such as a study on the impact of the Covid pandemic on the European convention sector. Also, the strategic organisation has published a white paper on The Future Role and Purpose of Convention Bureaux and a white paper called How can National Convention Bureaux Leverage Their Influence for Sustainability? This document presents a collaborative action plan to guide the transition towards sustainable business events in Europe.

The alliance plays a significant role in promoting Europe as a premier destination for business events. According to IPK World Travel Monitor, Europe hosts nearly 2.4 million international business visitors annually, and approximately 54 per cent of all association meetings worldwide occur in Europe. By working together, the members aim to enhance Europe’s competitiveness in the global business events market and drive innovation in the industry. We met Matthias Schultze, Managing Director, GCB Germany Convention Bureau, and Eric Bakermans, Director of Marketing Meetings & Conventions, Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions, in Barcelona at the PCMA Convening EMEA meeting and asked them how it all started.

“We first met in Hyderabad, India, at the ICCA Congress in 2010, and we immediately found common ground to work from, starting with our own two countries, Germany and the Netherlands. Then we talked to Christian Mutschlechner, who was then the President of the Austria Convention Bureau,” says Matthias Schultze.

“That was the first ICCA Congress for Matthias and my 10th edition. We started talking, and I think it was at one of the trade shows, Imex or IBTM World, that you came to me. We crossed the aisle because we were neighbours at the show,” says Eric Bakermans. “We talked about initiating or setting up a European network of national bureaux and convention bureaux because we have similar challenges, opportunities, and topics that do not necessarily relate to city bureaux but do impact the national level.”

When they spoke to Christian Mutschlechner, he said, “It’s a very good idea. We must have the first meeting in Vienna.” Later, they invited six colleagues to their first meeting, the convention bureaux of Poland, Estonia, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia, and Switzerland. For the first three years, the group met twice a year and just started an exchange. The network invited others to follow and join the initiative. In 2015, the members understood that they had to formalise their meetings. They all signed a Memorandum of Understanding during the Munich, Germany meeting in January 2015. There, the group defined the network’s objectives and targets.

Moreover, they agreed it’s mainly about peer learning, learning from others, exchanging ideas, and discussing challenges, as they all face similar challenges. Secondly, they also decided to conduct joint market research, because they all needed evidence-based information, facts, and figures to make informed critical business decisions. And thirdly, they decided to jointly create whitepapers to achieve a shared knowledge base, understanding, and goal for what they, as Europeans, want to achieve together. When it comes to big challenges, it makes more sense to work together rather than having Italy, Germany, or France working individually on separate solutions to the same problems. The basic idea was simply to align their efforts on a strategic level.

The strategic alliance has faced several obstacles since 2014. One was the Covid-19 pandemic, both as individual organisations and as a group. Matthias Schultze says that the positive thing with the group was that immediately, a mere few weeks after Covid started spreading rampant, they decided to conduct joint market research in cooperation with Tourism Economics and perform recovery analysis.

“When and how will business events come back? It was the question most of our partners were affected by. We all wanted to know the same thing. What was the recovery process in the long-, mid- and short-term? Our needs and interests were all aligned, and we could tap into and finance this and had the same common goal. That was a huge advantage. The pandemic was the obstacle, and working together and financing the research was the way to overcome it,” says Matthias Schultze.

Eric Bakermans explains that every national convention bureau puts up the same amount of money, but the costs are relatively small since the collaboration is project-based. If ten countries, out of the Alliance’s current 29 members, decide to work on a particular project, then those ten members divide the costs by ten. So if it’s 15 countries, the costs are divided by 15, and if only two countries are interested, they simply divide the costs for the project by two. This makes everything run smoothly since only interested parties contribute financially, and any member not interested in a certain project need only opt out of it. There is a base fee for the membership, however, to finance operational costs or research projects, such as the Convene 4 Climate Conference, an inaugural event by PCMA, the Strategic Alliance of National Convention Bureaux of Europe, and other collaborators.

“It is a platform to bring together the business event industry and other sectors to explore future scenarios, growing knowledge and creative solutions around the intersection of climate tech and the world of business events. The event is, for the most part, financed through the membership fees. Every year, we propose this year’s membership fee, and if everybody can afford to sign off on it, we go ahead with the proposed fee. So, it’s very democratic and transparent,” says Eric Bakermans.

On the question of whether the strategic alliance is an interest association for the 29 members, and/or a lobbying organisation, Matthias Schultze answers: “We don’t call ourselves a lobbying organisation. We are a platform where we bring together 29 European countries on a national level and where we can discuss challenges, but also discuss answers. I think this is one of the most powerful tools that we have available to us, being able to have national-level convention bureaux sitting together as one, discussing topics and challenges and jointly finding the solutions we need. As a network, we are working closely together, and from time to time some countries are invited by other countries when they organise partner events or do lobbying so that we can explain how we do it in Germany, or the Austrians can explain how they do it in Austria. So that’s the positive thing about the alliance, that we can all learn from each other. There are 29 solutions out there. There is no one-size-fits-all.

“The way we operate now, Matthias and I can manage this with a bit of extra help. And for special projects, we may ask members to join in and help. It’s an agile organisation, and we don’t want to put too much effort into managing ourselves. We just want to drive things forward. So, yeah, ’agile’ is a good word for it,” says Eric Bakermans.

“The glue of our organisation is that we value each other and know our strengths, but we also know our weaknesses as well. This group is diverse, which makes the alliance powerful because we have so many different strengths that can drive everything forward,” says Matthias Schultze.

Regarding future new members, the current members have all agreed that the United Nations Geo-Scheme defines who can become a member or not. The scheme counts 54 European countries, and 29 are already strategic alliance members. For example, a few smaller countries don’t have convention bureaux in place. 

Matthias Schultze summarises what the alliance has accomplished so far: “The first thing we published was the white paper on the future role and purpose of the National Convention Bureaux. There, we defined eight short-term and long-term milestones. The next step was to create a white paper on sustainability and how the National Convention Bureaux can leverage its influence on sustainability in the business sectors and ecosystems. Two concrete projects came out of the white papers: to increase awareness and sustainability in our sector in Europe. So, we joined forces with PCMA and created the Convene 4 Climate Conference. That’s a concrete outcome of our work,” says Matthias Schultze.

Now, the alliance has created the Sustainability Hub for Events (SHE). This AI-based platform feeds all relevant data from all 29 European member organisations regarding guidelines, rules, and regulations in each country. The action is a cooperation between the alliance and the Net Zero Carbon Events Initiative. Eric Bakermans explains that you can interact with the AI platform by starting a dialogue like, “Can you please help me create sustainable vegan catering?” The tool then begins allowing you to build that guideline for vegan catering based on all the data available in your respective country.

“All the data collected will be tagged with its respective source, so that you can confirm it wasn’t just made up by us, the alliance, but is sourced from somewhere else. When that is all done, we also need to ensure that all the data or content in the tool is accurate and up-to-date. For that, we also need a gatekeeper, a committee, that provides that up-to-date data. But we’ll use the respective membership of each country to make sure that the data being collected is accurate and makes sense. We don’t upload nonsense. So, once all that data is fed, a tool can translate it into every desirable language. I think it will be very useful for event planners and suppliers in our sector,” says Eric Bakermans.

“The Sustainability Hub for Events platform also contains a CO₂ estimator, not a CO₂ calculator, but a CO₂ estimator where you can put all the data on your event into the estimator, and then it calculates for you how much CO₂ your event may produce and at the same time it offers concrete actions for recommendation how to reduce the CO₂ footprint for your event. So, it’s a real tool that can help all event planners and event organisers optimise their CO₂ emissions,” says Matthias Schultze.