As announced on Friday by CEO Paolo Audino, BTC will organise in Italy the Politicians Forum, the programme created by IMEX to raise the awareness of politicians and local officials on the value of events and their economic, social and business benefits for destinations.
20 MARCH 2012 – BTC, the Italian trade show for the meetings, events, conferences, incentive travel and business tourism industry, to be held on 21-22 June at the Fiera di Rimini Exhibition Centre, will bring the Politicians Forum to Italy in 2013; the programme, developed by IMEX, is designed to educate and raise the awareness of politicians and local officials worldwide on the value of the meetings industry.
The announcement was made on Friday by Paolo Audino, chief executive of Exmedia (the company that organises BTC), at the Federcongressi&eventi convention, during the panel discussion Innovation in the governance of destinations, in which he took part as a speaker alongside Ray Bloom, chairman of the IMEX Group, and various representatives of local governments and convention bureaus.
The session was intended to highlight the economic, social and business value of events and conferences, and looked at success case studies in which, in Italy and abroad, local authorities have taken a leading and proactive role in the creation of an internationally-competitive conference “product” for their region and of policies to support it.
“This panel discussion clearly evidenced the need for the Italian meetings industry to make politicians and local officials aware of the sector’s value and of the extraordinary opportunities for economic, social and business development that events and conferences offer to host destinations”, said Mr. Audino. “It is therefore the right moment to announce the collaboration that BTC has formed with IMEX to organise the Politicians Forum in Italy, thereby providing also in our country an indispensable opportunity to bring together industry operators and local government representatives”.
The Italian Politicians Forum will be organised by BTC with the strategic support of IMEX, and will make its debut at BTC 2013. Aside from this agreement, to date, the format has only been exported from its original IMEX environment to Sweden.
“The Italian Politicians Forum is excellent news”, commented Ray Bloom, chairman of the IMEX Group. “IMEX will provide BTC with full strategic support and all the experience it has gained in ten years of organising the programme at international level”.
