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Special Report
Destination Competitive Index
Ranking cities in terms of their competitive strength for attracting international conventions.
About the Report
Since 2018, GainingEdge’s Destination Competitive Index has ranked destinations based on their competitive strength to attract international conferences. We analyse destination competitiveness with the aim to help them understand which strategies and activities they can use to be successful.
Miloš Milovanović
Head of GainingEdge Analysis & Research (GEAR)
For More Information
Destination Competitive Index 2022-2023
This groundbreaking report, now in its fifth year, provides a comprehensive analysis of meeting destinations worldwide, offering insights into their competitiveness, strengths, and areas for improvement.
Focus on Three Major Global Regions
This year’s edition shifts its focus to three major global regions: Top 30 EMEA destinations (Europe, Middle East, Africa), Top 15 APAC destinations (Asia-Pacific and Oceania), and Top 15 American destinations (North and Latin America). The featured destinations were selected based on their performance from January 2020 to December 2022, with a focus on in-person association meetings due to their significant impact on destinations. The number of meetings held is referenced from the International Congress and Convention (ICCA)’s database of association meetings 2020-2022.
Excluding Virtual and Postponed Meetings for Comparability
To restore comparability with the pre-pandemic period, virtual, canceled, and postponed meetings were excluded from the analysis. The decision to focus exclusively on in-person meetings reflects the significant disruptions caused by global challenges, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to varying responses, geopolitical issues, and disruptions in supply chains and the economic environment.
The Destination Competitive Index can help destinations with:
The Index is a useful source of information for such analysis and a helpful tool for establishing competitive sets.
The Index offers a tool for comparing the relative competitive strengths of destinations, which in turn provides insights into how those relative strengths relate to business outcomes.
The Index allows bureaus and destinations to strengthen these assessments based on a more sophisticated model, which sheds light on the issue of “comparability”.
Sometimes we find that destination stakeholders (public and private) embark on visioning processes without any robust assessment of how visionary the goals actually are. The Index provides a useful benchmark for visioning processes.
Once destinations have established meaningful vision and goals, the next step is putting in place strategies that will drive success. The Index provides useful insights into focus issues that will underpin those strategies.
As destinations set goals and develop a more rational focus on competitive sets and relative performance levels, they will be more capable of evaluating the resource needs that will be required to achieve their strategic goals.
The Index helps destinations compare themselves to others in relation to key product issues. If they want to increase their competitiveness, they’ll have an easier time identifying the factors that require the most attention and validates to policy makers and industry what needs to be done.
The Index helps identify key issues that need to be addressed in a destination’s communications processes.
GainingEdge Experts on This Special Report
Miloš Milovanović
Head of GainingEdge Analysis & Research (GEAR)
