Meeting Star award 2013
For the third year in the row, Kongres Magazine called a tender for Meetings Star award, award for outstanding contributions in the field of marketing communication of destinations, congresses, events and meetings industry suppliers in South East Europe. The award is a visible recognition of creativity, knowledge and work based on team-work and experiences that brought clear and measurable results.
Top Destinations 2013
- Prague 4,64
- Dubrovnik 4,61
- Budapest 4,53
Editorial Board of Kongres magazine again prepared an overview of the top convention destinations in the region, which have been evaluated in the context of the project KONGRES MEETOLOGUE. Within the project we are discovering lesser known destinations and compare them with the more well-known and established ones.
To date, they have visited and evaluated 34 destinations in which they have thoroughly reviewed, analysed and evaluated:
– Natural and cultural factors
– General and transport infrastructure
– Tourist infrastructure
– Meetings infrastructure
Each destination has also received a subjective grade.
At the end of the year due to the many changes and innovations were reassessed the destinations that they have already evaluated in 2010 and 2011. As an additional criterion, they have taken into account this year’s ranking of individual cities on the ICCA scale (ICCA Country and City Rankings 2012) and Merecer’s global scale of quality of life in individual capitals.
Cities were divided into two categories:
– Large and medium sized cities with more than 150.000 inhabitants
– Smaller regional and local towns with less than 150.000 inhabitants
Among larger cities in first places there were no surprises and in the lead remain Prague and Budapest. The most advanced Belgrade, which due to new investments and improved accessibility ended up in seventh place. On the scale also advanced Split. Zagreb, Ljubljana, Graz and Krakow remain in the first part of the scale with similar grades as previous year.
Among smaller cities with a large assault the first is Dubrovnik, which is also in absolute terms the second best congress destination of the region. To the tenth place then with minimal differences are listed famous tourist destinations, which are increasingly focusing on congress tourism. Interesting surprises include fast-growing new congress destinations Umag, Zadar, Šibenik. The most in the last year eroded Maribor and Osijek, because both cities have not yet exploited their vast potential.