Results of an independent survey sent to more than 200 global associations, convention planners and local organising committee clients has given the eight international city members of the BestCities Global Alliance the thumbs up on delivering outstanding service.
Steen Jakobsen, Convention Director of Wonderful Copenhagen said: “Although the results of the survey are very satisfying, in the process the Alliance has also identified areas of improvement and we will strive towards closing these gaps.”
Ana Maria Viscasillas, BestCities Board Chair and CEO of Puerto Rico CVB added: “Underlying this commitment to provide quality services, BestCities operates a Quality Management System to ensure that information, best practices and effective processes are shared between the 8 member partners. The Alliance is now in the process of reviewing the QMS to make it even more customer focused.”
The survey conducted by Lynn Jones Research measured convention planning services, delegate boosting and marketing support, on- site event service and post event support.
The objective is to demonstrate to clients that each bureau in the Alliance is meeting an agreed quality standard. Thus whichever BestCities bureau a client uses, the service received will be of the same high quality.
Some of the areas that received an average rating of 9/10 or above were customer service, quality of the bid materials provided, overall experience of working with the CVB and assistance with the bid preparation.
Vivienne Gracian, from the World Conference of Forensic Mental Health was happy to provide this feedback: “During the bid process the bureau offered full support and I am certain that their input in putting together our bid was instrumental in our winning. They provided an endless stream of knowledge and experience that meant we were able to organise our event without having to buy in expertise in conference organisation.”
Attendance figures at congresses were largely in line with expectations with 46% of organisers with 22% reporting higher than expected attendance. 30% of organisers’ expectations of a host city were surpassed highlighting the strength of the offering at a destination perspective within BestCities.
In line with high levels of destination satisfaction congress organisers indicated a clear intent to recommend BestCities destinations amongst colleagues attributing a high likelihood to recommend score of 8.58 out of 10.
Over 30% of clients opted to receive additional information about partner services indicating the significant scope for referrals amongst past clients.
