It has been an extremely successful month for the SECC and Glasgow – not only was the European Federation of Neurological Societies (EFNS) conference a huge success, they won the bid to host the European Congress of Immunology and Glasgow was voted the UK’s top city in a poll by the readers of lifestyle magazine Condé Nast Traveller.

The EFNS conference in September achieved record attendance with 4,500 leading neurologists from across Europe attending the five-day event at the SECC, injecting £4.2 million into the local economy.

Daniella Dreman, director operations at Kenes International, organiser of EFNS said: "The cooperation we had at the SECC was the best of all the centres we worked in. The congress centre itself is particularly suitable for a congress with the same requirements as EFNS and I can recommend it to your other clients with pleasure." 

And the SECC, with help from Glasgow City Marketing Bureau (GCMB), has also added to its portfolio of major international conferences by winning the bid to host the European Congress on Immunology (ECI) in 2012.

Team Glasgow beat off stiff competition from Istanbul and Prague to land the conference, which will inject £9 million into the economy of Greater Glasgow.

The ECI win is the result of five years of hard work after the Ambassador Programme staff approached Professor Eddy Liew, the director of the Glasgow Biomedical Research Centre at the University of Glasgow, to ask if he would support a British bid to host the ECI meeting.

Speaking about the win Professor Liew said: “This is very good news for Glasgow as a city and for the academics working there. It provides a high profile for the scientific work in the city and it highlights Glasgow as a premier destination for international scientific meetings.

“The presentation by the Glasgow team was universally agreed to be superb and it blew the other competitors away.

“The Ambassador Programme was very helpful in introducing me to other Ambassadors, which gave me an idea of what is available in the city so that when opportunities to bid for conferences such as these arise, you can speak with confidence.”

Molly Doheny, head of the Convention Bureau at GCMB, said: “I am delighted we were able to work with the SECC to help Professor Liew to win this prestigious conference for Glasgow. We have been working with him for five years to achieve this result. This is a great example of our Ambassador Programme delivering major convention business for the city.

Speaking about the recent accolades, Ben Goedegebuure, director of conferences at the SECC said: “It’s a triple hit for Glasgow. The city is gaining increasing recognition as one of the best conference destinations in the world. It also demonstrates that the partnership between the SECC and Glasgow City Marketing Bureau (GCMB), working together to bring major conferences to the city, is getting it right.

“However, this does not mean that we will be resting on our laurels in anyway. It’s a highly competitive industry and we will continue to build upon our reputation of providing a first-class service and developing our facilities to ensure we are an attractive option for conference organisers the world over.”