Orlando held on to its ranking as the top meeting destination in the U.S., as rated by Cvent, a leading event management technology company. Chicago, which was No. 3 in Cvent’s 2015 rankings behind Las Vegas, swapped places with Las Vegas this year. Atlanta and San Diego rounded out the top five.
For its fifth annual ranking of meeting destinations, Cvent evaluated over 5,000 cities, ranking them based on meeting and event booking activity in the Cvent Supplier Network, as well as the number of meeting and event venues in the area. Cvent tracked booking activity in 2015 and reviewed the following criteria:
· Unique requests for proposals received
· Total room nights
· Awarded requests for proposals
· Awarded room nights
· Percentage of qualified meeting venues
· Number of profile views
New Orleans is the only newcomer to the top 10 meeting destination cities on the 2016 list, rising to No. 10 from 12 last year. The Big Easy replaced Phoenix, which fell to 15th on the 2016 list.
Cvent also ranked the top 25 destinations in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, as well as debuting rankings for the Asia Pacific region. The different regions are ranked independently of each other. London, Barcelona and Amsterdam were the
top three for the EMEA region, while Singapore, Sydney and Kuala Lampur, Malaysia were the top-three destinations in the Asia Pacific region.
“Meetings and events are critically important to the economies of cities of all sizes around the world,” says Kevin Fliess, vice president of marketing for Cvent’s Hospitality Cloud. “During the past five years, we have tracked how cities across the U.S. compete. Factors that have often created a difference have included investments in infrastructure, hotel renovations within a city, economic factors that make a destination more appealing and offering an alternative to mainstream destinations. More recently, we have been tracking EMEA and APAC locations and are already seeing similar methods of competing.”
Affordability and investment in infrastructure help cities worldwide
Top 10 Meeting Destinations
Here’s how cities ranked in Cvent’s 2016 rankings for meeting destination cities:
United States
1. Orlando
2. Chicago
3. Las Vegas
4. Atlanta
5. San Diego
6. New York
7. Washington, D.C.
8. Dallas
9. Nashville
10. New Orleans
Europe/Middle East/Africa
1. London
2. Barcelona
3. Amsterdam
4. Paris
5. Berlin
6. Rome
7. Frankfurt
8. Madrid
9. Brussels
10. Prague
Asia Pacific Region
1. Singapore
2. Sydney
3. Kuala Lampur, Malaysia
4. Bangkok, Thailand
5. Hong Kong
6. Shanghai
7. Melbourne
8. Tokyo
9. Beijing
10. Seoul
