Glasgow City Marketing Bureau’s innovative website has won a top prize at a prestigious digital awards ceremony.

GCMB’s website has won the chairman’s award in the inaugural Drum Awards for Digital Industries (DADI).

GCMB has been pioneering in its use of leading-edge technology to promote Glasgow nationally and internationally and to help professional conference organisers get the maximum impact for their meetings in the city.

In June, GCMB achieved what is believed to be a world first when the opening forum of the prestigious IEEE International Conference on Communications was broadcast live on the Convention Bureau website. The forum included presentations from chief executives from leading technology companies including Microsoft, BT, Vodafone and Motorola.

More than 400 technology enthusiasts from around the world, - from countries as diverse as Australia, Taiwan, China, Mexico, Slovenia, the United States and Israel – followed the proceedings live through the Convention Bureau website.

The number of monthly page views on www.seeglasgow.com has grown from 800,000 last June to 1.8 million today, while page views for the Convention Bureau section of the website have more than trebled in the same period to 25,000 per month.

Phil Jones, chair of the judging panel at the DADI awards, said: “The chairman’s award was given to Glasgow City Marketing Bureau’s website because it promotes Glasgow to visitors so well, but it is also used by residents.

“It is easy to navigate, it shows the best parts of Glasgow, and its effectiveness, in terms of the number of users and page impressions, is astonishing.”

Scott Taylor, the chief executive of GCMB, said: “Technology can add value and we are committed to using it to create significant points of difference for conference organisers.

“We provide not just a different level of service, but we use technology to deliver significantly higher values to conference organisers. There is no better example of this than our recent live broadcast of the opening of the IEEE conference, which was watched through our website by people from Taiwan to Texas.”

Alexandra Redmond, head of Information and Communications Technology at GCMB, said: “Since we revamped the website last year, the number of visitors has shot up. The big increase in traffic to the Convention Bureau section shows that the meetings industry is using the website to promote the destination, find out about venues and support business, and to discover the range of support that we can offer them.”

Katy Hill, senior event manager of In Conference Ltd, the organiser of ICC2007, confirmed the live broadcast was a major asset for the meeting. “This was great because it allowed people unable to attend the conference to see the keynote speakers and it brings the conference to a wider market,” she said. “This adds value to us as a conference organising company.”