What is the Conference Study

The conference industry is one of tourism industry`s lead activity generators for many destinations worldwide. Moreover, it is widely recognised that conference tourists spend multiples of what city-break or sea and sun tourists do, creating substantial spill-over effects for the local economies (hotels, restaurants, museums, shops etc.) For this reason, city authorities, usually in partnership with the private sector, compete with one another by creating new, often state-of-the-art, conference centres in order to acquire a share of the market. Yet, no meaningful statistics exist in Europe comparing the operations of conference centres that can serve as benchmarks for tracking performance and monitoring the development of the sector.

TravelDailyNews International supports JBR Hellas which regularly carries out benchmark studies of the Greek hotel industry, www.hotelstudy.gr, where it tracks the market mix, revenue mix, departmental profitability and overall profitability of the sector. JBR Hellas is, therefore, very aware of the usefulness of such indicators - even the simplest ones - for monitoring the developments of the sector; also it has first hand feedback from users of its studies about the valuable support it provides them in their decision making.

Based on this experience and its recent involvement with a number of projects on conference centres, JBR Hellas launch this benchmark study on European Large Conference Centres to fill in what the company perceive to be a substantial gap in the market. To carry out its study, JBR Hellas has addressed separately each of the approximately 300 European conference centres it could identify that:

• has at least one room / auditorium with seating capacity of minimum 1.000 pax theatre style and
• is `stand-alone`, i.e. not part of a hotel.

JBR Hellas Business Consultants will greatly appreciate receiving as many completed questionnaires as possible, also including from centres not in its database. After receiving a sufficient number that will permit meaningful statistical analysis, participants will receive:

• a free copy of the study
• a password in order to download the complete study through the JBR Hellas website. The study will be updated as more questionnaires are received.

Obviously, in line with all similar studies, JBR Hellas will handle all received information with confidentiality, and will only use it for statistical purposes.
Please download a questionnaire from the right and submit your reply to conferencestudy@jbrhellas.gr or via fax at +30-210-3606935

JBR Hellas is conducting this study with the support of TravelDailyNews International.