The addition of 13 new member congress centres over the past 6 months has swelled membership in the International Association of Congress Centres (AIPC) to 140 centres in 50 countries world wide.

This level of membership is the highest AIPC has ever experienced, and represents a high degree of global coverage for the association.

“AIPC’s success is based on the effective use and sharing of the experience and expertise of our members all over the world”, says AIPC President Barbara Maple. “So to us, the size of our membership is not just about numbers but rather a set of valuable resources that we can as a group bring to bear on industry issues and use to advance our goal of encouraging and recognizing excellence in facility management”.

New member centres who have joined AIPC during this period are:

- CCIB Centre Convencions Internacional Barcelona, Spain

- Internationales Kongresszentrum Bundeshaus Bonn, Germany

- The Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, USA

- Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre, Australia

- Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, Malaysia

- The Barbican Centre, London UK

- Trade Fairs and Congress Center of Malaga, Spain

- The Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, Australia

- Messe Congress Centrum Stuttgart, Germany

- Helexpo Congress Center Ioannis Velidis, Thessaloniki, Greece

- The Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Canada

- The Victoria Conference Centre, Canada

- Austria Center Vienna

Maple noted that the wide geographic diversity of the new members meant that AIPC was well on track to achieving its goal of true global representation. “Each new member that joins AIPC is a source of new information and perspective on our industry, and when we have members representing such a wide geographic base we have an even greater diversity of insights to draw upon”, she said.