HOFBURG Vienna is set to buck the economic trend with a highly promising year for its conference business. More than 25 major events will be bringing delegates from all over the world to Vienna.

The congress season begins with the Trilateral Conference on Thrombosis and Haemostasis, which will be held with some 1,200 attendees on 3 - 7 February. “All together we have bookings for over twenty major conferences and congresses, three quarters of them international in character,” says Managing Director Renate Danler. Apart from Austria, this year’s conference organisers come mainly from Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, France and the USA. “Most of the events will have between 400 and 1,200 participants. In April we will have the pleasure of hosting a multi-day conference for a multinational corporation with about 3,000 attendees,” adds Ms Danler. More than 60 percent of total revenues at HOFBURG Vienna derive from its conference and congress activities, with a large number of regular clients having a healthy impact on the centre’s bottom line.

Among the Hofburg events there is a clear focus on medical congresses, as the following examples show: Joint Meeting of the 7th World Congress on Melanoma and 5th Congress of the European Association of Dermato-Oncology (13 - 16 May) with 600 attendees, 2nd International Congress on Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (21 - 24 May), which is expected to attract 1,200 physicians, 59th Congress of the German Society of Oral, Maxillary and Facial Surgery (2 - 4 June) with 500 participants, and the International Meeting on Advanced Spine Technologies (16 - 18 July) with an audience of about 800.

The 2009 conference calendar also includes several events organised by various international organizations and associations, especially from the scientific. Over a thousand experts from all over the world will be at the Hofburg, for example, at the International Vienna Motor Symposium (7 - 8 May), which is considered the number-one event for the automotive engineering industry worldwide. Many national and international companies will once again be holding their meetings and conferences at HOFBURG Vienna, too.

As the permanent conference facility of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), HOFBURG Vienna hosts an additional 2,500 meetings and conferences. Over 60,000 delegates from 56 member states are constant visitors to the conference centre. Together with the many international meetings and conferences organised by the various ministries in Vienna, that makes the Hofburg an important political venue, too.

To mark the combined anniversaries of HOFBURG Vienna (50 years as an international conference and events centre) and the Vienna Convention Bureau (40th anniversary), a joint symposium for congress organizers entitled “The Meeting Industry in 2020" will be held on 28 April.

All together, HOFBURG Vienna – with its various fields of business, from conferences, congresses and trade fairs to banquets and balls and much else besides – generates between 180 and 200 million euros in induced earnings a year. For HOFBURG Vienna itself (not including catering), annual net sales total some 10 million euros.