IAPCO has recently done a survey among its members to know more about the economical impact of the Meetings and Exhibition business professional conference organizers manage on a daily basis.

The method used by the survey was very easy and clear: number of national and international meetings managed and with or without exhibitions; a meeting as such must have at least 300 participants and a participant is known as anyone passing through the registration process.

79% of the members answered the survey which shows the interest and power the association has over the world and the accuracy of the results.

And these results are quite astonishing: IAPCO members have managed nearly 3000 meetings in 2006 with over 1.400.000 participants and more than 410.000 square meters of exhibition handled.

In terms of kinds of meetings, 49% of the meetings handled were Association meetings, while 41% were Corporate and 10% Governmental meetings. This shows a pretty well balanced percentage between corporate and association meetings, thus changing the image IAPCO members probably had!

The survey shows also the globalisation of IAPCO members activities as 39% of them are acting as International and National Core PCOs; therefore accompanying their clients not only in their home country but also everywhere in the world.

Another interesting figure is that only 15% of IAPCO members handle more than 100 meetings per year. The average is actually around 50 meetings during a calendar year.

However, the most important figures that came out of the survey is the economical impact of all the meetings managed by IAPCO members. Knowing that the average registration fee and square meter fee for a meeting is respectively around 550 Euros and 500 Euros, the total budget managed by IAPCO members is of about 1 Billion Euros!

Knowing also that each delegate spends about 1620 Euros to come and attend a conference, the survey shows that the economical impact of the meetings managed by IAPCO members is around 2,3 Billion Euros or the equivalent of 12 Airbus A380 (210M€).