Melbourne has won its first international business event for the new 5,000 seat Melbourne Convention Centre, due for completion in 2008. The 4,000 delegate International Congress of Internal Medicine (ICIM) will be held at the new Centre in March 2010. It will almost fill the new Centre whilst the delegate’s accommodation in Melbourne will be the equivalent of filling every room in Crown Towers for almost a month.

The announcement of the winning city was made at this year’s ICIM in Granada, Spain on 29 September, where representatives from Melbourne Convention + Visitors Bureau (MCVB) and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) made a final presentation to the bid committee.

“MCVB and the RACP have collaborated over a number of years, to win this important international business event for Melbourne. We competed  firstly against Sydney, Cairns and Brisbane to win the right to represent Australia’s bid and then faced strong competition from Santiago and Istanbul, last week in Spain,” said Garry Kingshott, CEO, MCVB.

“To win an event like this for Melbourne requires a lot of support from the local industry. Once again, Melbourne has shown that when the hotels, conference organizers, airlines and our world class convention centre get behind MCVB and one of our clients we can beat the best in the world,” he said.

Speaking from Granada, Associate Professor Geoffrey Metz, a member of the Royal Australasian College of Physician’s bid committee, said how delighted he was to win the event for Melbourne.

“We were very keen to host this internationally important meeting and we felt that we would not be likely to succeed in getting it for Melbourne without the new Convention Centre being announced,” Professor Metz said.

“Bringing these people to Melbourne has a huge impact on our own young research workers and doctors who have the ability to meet with leading international scientists and researchers.

“The Melbourne Convention + Visitors Bureau has worked closely with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians for some years in developing a strategic campaign that positioned Melbourne favourably to win the bid for the International Congress of Internal Medicine 2010. I’ve been enormously inspired by their expertise and professionalism. Similarly, the team at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre has been very supportive of our efforts to bring ICIM to Melbourne,” he said.