ECM, the European network of city tourist offices and convention bureaux, has just gone through a series of marketing activities in the Indian outbound conference, meetings and incentive market in three different cities last week : Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmadabad.
“BRIC markets and in particular India, are important source markets for European Cities. The Indian economy is strong and never really felt the impact of the global economic crisis as we did in Europe. There is a huge middle class segment emerging together with a significant high net worth, luxury segment and there is a lot of interest in travel to Europe. Our belief and experience indicates that Europe is more attractive as an “idea” than a set of individual countries and that cities are far more interesting than the countries they belong to.” declares Ignasi de Delàs, ECM President.
A yearly roadshow to 3 Indian cities
Based on the success of last year with more than 200 clients during the whole week, ECM provided its members cities with a yearly roadshow with 3 luncheons and social events to brand ECM as a roof organisation for 110 European cities and particularly those who attend the event.
The originality of this workshop, organized in cooperation with tmf, relies in the wide range of communication, telemarketing and social media activities, giving ECM a complete promotion platform consisting of event build‐up and follow‐up. See www.experientialplanner.com
Training local partners
The innovative part of the collaboration with tmf will be a workshop dedicated to city’s local partners. This event will help preparing the city’s local partners to be ready for business leads coming from Indian planners and through their CVB. “The city’s local partners will learn about opportunities and challenges of a huge market, some cultural aspects reaching into MICE relationships, about groups already handled in Europe and in their city and other key points in doing business with India. The first edition held in Berlin on May 26 was a tremendous success!” outlines Heike Mahmoud, director Conventions Visit Berlin, Berlin Conventions Office and ECM Vice-president for the Meetings Industry.
Heike Mahmoud, Vice- President of European Cities Marketing, concluded: “Cities never stand still. In the future every city will need to compete globally for their fair share of talent, business, meetings and tourism. We are thrilled that we can now offer this outstanding opportunity to all of our members in India.”
The Annual Roadshow took place in Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmadabad, from July 14-17, 2014 and involved the cities of Barcelona, Berlin, Bilbao, Salzburg, Vienna and Zagreb. You can follow the event on www.experientialplanner.com or ECM Facebook page.
