The Vienna Tourist Board’s Vienna Convention Bureau has been licensed to certify meetings as green meetings for another four years. The license – first issued to the bureau in the year 2011 – has to be renewed at regular intervals. It offers significant advantages in the international conference sector.
All over the world, organizers of congresses, corporate events and incentives are increasingly following the trend to stage their events as green meetings, which take into account climate protection, regional value-added and social acceptability. The route to official certification leads via a licensee who advises the organizer and handles the formalities necessary to certify the relevant meetings as “green”. The latter is also bound by strict environmental protection regulations.
The license for this purpose – the Austrian Eco-label for Green Meetings – is always issued for only four years by the Consumer Protection Association on behalf of the Ministry of Life. In order to renew the license, the licensee is obliged to qualify again, a procedure carried out in practice at a real event. The Vienna Convention Bureau – a licensee since November 2011 – successfully complied with the requirements for renewal with the 4th European Congress on the Use, Management and Conservation of Buildings of Historical Value held at the Hofburg Vienna on October 8 and 9, 2015.
The entire qualification process was supervised by Stephanie Smejkal, the person responsible for Green Meetings at the Vienna Convention Bureau, who reports: “On the basis of our experience in this field, we were reasonably optimistic that our license would be renewed – this year alone we have already assisted 25 events to obtain certification as green meetings.
It is nevertheless useful to carry out a regular review, as this gives organizers the confidence that they are partnering a license holder whose quality is controlled and always in line with the latest standards.” Green meetings are increasingly becoming an image factor in the international conference sector that is well received not only by delegates, customers and business partners, but also by the general public. There are currently 62 licensees in Austria offering assistance to convention organizers, 36 of them based in Vienna.
