Cvent’s Top Meetings Destinations in U.S., Europe & Now Asia/Pacific

Orlando once again topped Cvent’s annual list of the United States’ top 50 destinations for meetings and events. The meetings technology provider analyzes activity initiated through its hotel sourcing and RFP tools to determine market leaders and this year included Europe, the Middle East and Africa as a region—it previously featured just Europe—and debuted a list for Asia/Pacific.

On the U.S. front, Chicago landed the No. 2 spot this year, behind Orlando, with Las Vegas rounding out the top three. No surprises there, as these convention cities vie for the top three spots year after year. Orlando has taken the first place four of the five years Cvent has provided U.S. rankings.

Nashville was the only potential surprise among the top 10 U.S. meetings destinations, but those watching the industry have seen the city’s meetings business skyrocket in the past three years. The Omni Nashville took the top spot among the 100 top U.S. meetings hotels that Cvent ranked in March, while Gaylord Opryland snagged the No. 2 spot on that list. Nashville has seen 3,000 rooms enter the market in the last five years, with 1,800 more in the pipeline. Average daily rate there has spiked in the past two years, as well.

Middle East & Asia Get in the Game
London grabbed the top spot on the EMEA top 25 list this year, followed by Barcelona, in lockstep with Cvent’s inaugural European rankings from 2015. Paris dropped just one spot to No. 4, making way for Amsterdam at No. 3. Though Cvent did not signal specific reasons for Paris’ decline, one must presume that the country’s terror events late last year registered as a blip in the city’s perennial popularity for meetings and events, and the real dent may register in next year’s list: Paris Convention Bureau executives have estimated RFP declines of 20 percent to 30 percent in January and February but now see meetings requests on the upswing.

By expanding the list’s regional coverage to include the Middle East, Cvent recognized the ascendance of Dubai’s draw for meeting groups. While Dubai didn’t break the top 10, which is dominated by European powerhouse markets, it registered at No. 11, which is a strong showing for the only Middle Eastern market to break through to the mainstream. To be sure, with the exception of Dubai, opening the doors to Middle East and Africa players did little to change the market mix on the inaugural Europe list from 2015.

Cvent also released its first top 25 list for Asia/Pacific, pegging Singapore, Sydney and Kuala Lumpur as the top three breakaway markets, in that order. All these markets are largely English-speaking gateway markets in the region. This leads to questions about the penetration of Cvent’s platform in the region and the quantity of regional data the tech company is able to collect. At the very least, it suggests that the region merits closer observation as dynamic Asia/Pacific players impact the market.

For example, the Global Business Travel Association sized the Chinese meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions market at $46.2 billion in 2014, pegging MICE as driving 42 percent of overall domestic business travel. The study identified top host destinations as Shanghai (27 percent), Beijing (24 percent) and Guangzhou (24 percent). Only 11 percent of MICE business originating within China was placed in Hong Kong, according to the GBTA report. The Cvent rankings showed Hong Kong out-ranking Shanghai, based on its own global data.

Revised figures in a report from GBTA released in April showed China edging past the United States in total business travel spending at the end of 2015 by a billion U.S. dollars, finishing the year with $291.2 billion in spend compared to the United States' $290.2 billion. The report also projected China’s total business travel volume would leap to more than $320 billion in 2016, more than 95 percent of that volume representing domestic business travel.

Doing the math, that comes to $127 billion in domestic MICE business, the majority concentrated in Shanghai and Beijing. As China asserts its dominance in the market, those interested in top meetings destinations and what attracts those dollars would do well to keep a close eye on regional data.