Skift Take
The BestCities Global Alliance and Dubai Business Events are focusing more on how convention bureaus can collaborate with association conference organizers to create a longer legacy impact of business events for both the organizations and host destinations.
The BestCities Global Alliance is a partnership of 11 convention bureaus worldwide that share best practices for hosting large-scale conferences for international associations.
For the first time since the launch of the Alliance in 2000, the bureaus gathered in Dubai this month for the inaugural BestCities Global Forum.
The theme was: “From Success to Significance for Events and Destinations.” The event focused on shifting how the value of meetings is measured, going beyond the success of a single convention to emphasizing the long-term business development opportunities, or "legacy impact," for both the organization and host destination.
According to Steen Jakobsen, director of Dubai Business Events, the strategy is an important evolution for convention bureaus in terms of how they engage conference organizers. It’s a shift from promoting the destination to attract meetings to support the local visitor economy, to instead, collaborating with associations to strengthen the local knowledge economy.
Dubai is a good example of that evolution in terms of its overall positioning on the world stage. The emirate is investing heavily to diversify its economy and develop itself as a global hub of innovation in advanced industries — illustrated by the theme of Expo Dubai 2020: “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future” — organized around the three pillars of opportunity, mobility, and sustainability.
In effect, one event is informing the development of an entire country, if not the whole of the modern Middle East.
“Dubai is now at the stage where it wants to transition into a full knowledge economy,” said Jakobsen. “That transition is driven by a number of different initiatives and policies spearheaded by the government. In that context, Expo is really seen as a catalyst or accelerator of that transformation into a knowledge economy. It represents a shift from being a more industrial society, which is focused around trade, to one where we’re moving full steam ahead into becoming a knowledge society.”
The following is our interview with Jakobsen examining the parallels between BestCities' collaborative mandate and Dubai Business Events' vision for the future of meetings.
Skift: What is the purpose of the BestCities Global Alliance?
Steen Jakobsen: The purpose is really to drive more business into each of our cities by collaborating, prima
