The ICCA rankings cover meetings organised by international associations which take place on a regular basis and which rotate between a minimum of three countries. The data represents a "snapshot" of qualifying events in the ICCA Association Database as sampled on 12 May 2009. ICCA's Association Database is designed as a sales and marketing resource for its members to target future international association meetings, which is why it does not include one-off events or those which do not move between locations.

This year the ICCA Data researchers have identified 7,475 events which took place in 2008, a rise of approximately 800 over 2007. Partly this reflects the strength of the market, partly it is thanks to a record number of ICCA members sending us their calendar information to help identify new events.

As has been the case since 2004, U.S.A. and Germany are the number one and two countries respectively measured by the number of international meetings organised in 2008. The numbers 4 and 5: Spain and France had a considerable increase by amount of meetings compared to 2007: 40 and 79 respectively.

For the first time in three years, Vienna shares the top with Paris as the most popular city. Barcelona on third place had an increase of 30 meetings over 2007. Remarkable newcomers in the top 20 are Athens, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Tokyo. Stockholm and Seoul both climb in the rankings to 8th and 9th position respectively.

ICCA is now working on the details behind these headline results. The full ICCA statistics report for 2008 will be released early June. The 10 Year statistics report covering 1999-2008 will be published late July.

The ICCA statistics reports will be freely available online to ICCA members. The International Association Meetings Market 2008 will also be sent to over 3,000 association meeting planners all over the world. ICCA encourages associations to use the statistics as a practical way to identify potential new destinations for their events.