The BI feedback button is your friend! The more you use it, the more concrete information you get. ICCA members - together with the ICCA team - are working hard to achieve a mutually beneficial situation of sharing information on the ICCA Business Intelligence Database.
Keep finding ways to press it and you'll be in the running to become the next Researcher of the Month - or even Researcher of the Year!
The Bologna Convention Bureau Team, has secured the coveted title this month! Here's what they had to say:
How is the ICCA database beneficial for your work/organisation?
The ICCA database provides us with access to a vast pool of potential business events, as well as valuable international and local contacts that are essential for entering future destination selection processes.
Increasingly, we are shifting our budget away from attending various events and investing more in intelligence, where the return on investment is significantly higher and much more immediate. Having up-to-date information about key individuals who can advocate for us at the highest levels of association decision-making bodies is a real source of strength.
This allows us to remain competitive and maintain constantly strong global rankings, even though we represent a smaller city of less than 400,000 inhabitants.
Do you have any tips for your fellow ICCA members?
We consistently use the database also as an analytical tool to benchmark ourselves against competing destinations. In particular, we compare our performance with cities of similar size across different regions of the world.
We closely monitor the number of booked events, their size, and their subjects that similar destinations are attracting. This helps us identify emerging trends at an early stage and adjust our strategies accordingly. Rather than following hype or marketing trends, we believe it is far more effective to base decisions on data and evidence.
What positive message would you like to share with ICCAWorld (this doesn’t have to be about work/database/research).
You don’t need a large budget or a globally famous destination to succeed in this industry. If you have the essential infrastructure in place, access to the ICCA database and right intelligence that can strengthen your position when bidding, your destination can be successful and can become capital of the world for certain topics during duration of an event even when competing against much larger and more established cities.