Expert Association Meetings

Organising international expert congresses has had a strong influence on the image of us as a host country for over a decade. The leading people in any given field usually attend these congresses. The country or city hosting an international congress is thus offered a unique chance to showcase its latest national achievements to the …

Read the article » April 24, 2008 Kongres articles, No. 3/2007 (I.) no responses.

Good Practice Case Studies

Social events at unusual venues – EUREKA’s main idea

Slovenia has taken over the one year presidency of EUREKA. Four conferences are envisaged within the scope of the presidency, in Maribor (October 2007), Bled (January 2008), Portorož (April 2008) and in Ljubljana (June 2008), with about 140 delegates from over 40 European countries attending each. Prior to Slovenia, EUREKA was presided over by the …

Read the article » April 24, 2008 Good Practices Case Studies, No. 4/2007 (I.) no responses.

Good Practice Case Studies

Who stole Tartini’s Violin?

A stimulatingly warm, pleasant sunny autumn afternoon in Piran. An international team of IT managers is lazily enjoying and spoiling themselves on a nice wooden sailboat in the bay. Their last two days have consisted entirely of meetings, strategies, deliberations and agreements, which is quite tiring despite the comfort of the sailboat. But – would …

Read the article » April 24, 2008 Good Practices Case Studies, No. 4/2007 (I.) no responses.

A Letter from Brussels

You don’t always have caviar…*The Double Life and Multiculturalism of International Associations

First, let’s put things in their proper places, for which our younger colleagues will be especially grateful. Where do (international) associations belong? Well, the answer is on the ‘Triglav’ (Slovenia’s highest mountain) of demand in our dear ‘meetings industry’, alongside corporate business tourism (led and owned by corporations) and on the other side of the …

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Column: Tony Carey

Why briefing the boss is not enough

Some years ago, when I was first invited to Slovenia to carry out some familiarisation training for a leading Ljubljana hotel, I discovered that my audience included not only the department heads on the operations side, but also the Head Chef, the Head Housekeeper and the Head of Maintenance. Never before had these key positions …

Read the article » April 24, 2008 Kongres articles, No. 3/2007 (I.) no responses.

Column: Paul Kennedy

“Offer” to Meeting Planners

In my last article, I emphasised in particular the need to ‘add value’ to the supply chain of the meetings business. This article focuses on the issue of the ‘offer’ to meeting planners, in other words, the buyers. I recently attended the AIPC international conference in Graz, Austria – an excellent destination by the way …

Read the article » April 24, 2008 Kongres articles, No. 3/2007 (I.) no responses.

Column: Kathryn Goldstein

MPI Signs the UN Compact on CSR

Meeting Professionals International (MPI) is passionate about being sustainable in our meetings and events and socially responsible citizens of the world. So it was a “natural” move for the global meetings and events community to become a signatory to the United Nations Compact on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR is a concept that encourages organizations …

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Colummn: Gorazd Čad

Congress Confrontation II

Nearly a year has gone by since the autumn meeting of the Slovenian Convention Bureau where we talked about relations between professional congress organisers and hoteliers. We asked ourselves two very important questions: why would hotels still need agencies and why do hotels give higher commissions to direct clients than to agencies? We have discovered …

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Column: Joyce Dogniez

Keep up with the changes

The European meetings industry is changing. New markets have appeared, have changed the dynamics of how to do business and have taken away the comfort of knowing who your competitors are. Not only are we seeing emerging European countries, but we also have to consider the rest of the world. The way we design and …

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