When IMEX Frankfurt 2015 opens on Tuesday, the international exhibition for incentive travel, meetings and events will be the biggest ever since launching in 2003. More than 150 countries and 3,500 exhibitors will be participating in the three-day show taking place at Kap Europa, Meese Frankfurt.
London & Partners, the official convention bureau for London, reports that it has secured a record number of appointments for this year’s show, with 650 meetings pre-booked among stand partners and convention bureau representatives. Not only is London & Partners the most popular city stand at IMEX this year, but the number of appointments mark a 32 percent increase since 2011. The London stand features 27 partners from hotels and venues across the city.
“London is booming and it’s a real honor to be able to share a selection of the city’s best venues, hotels and incentive travel options with event professionals from around the world at this year’s exhibition,” says Barbara Jamison, head of business development Europe for London & Partners. “Though we are the busiest city stand at the show, we are very much open for business and have many more appointments available for buyers keen to discuss bringing their event to London.”
Destination Liverpool will unveil a new initiative aimed at international conference organizers. Plus Liverpool is an all-encompassing program that provides support for meeting professionals bringing global events to the city and ACC Liverpool, which includes BT Convention Centre, Echo Arena and Exhibition Centre Liverpool.
“While the destination has always provided support to our international conference organizers, Plus Liverpool packages our partnership approach to working with organizers and making their event as seamless as possible,” says Kerrin MacPhie, director of sales at ACC Liverpool. “Some aspects of organizing a global conference can be challenging, particularly with clients and delegates based overseas, but through this program we are able to share the combined experience of our destination partners to invest in the event by providing support in a variety of ways.”
The opening keynote will be delivered by Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP, the world’s largest business software company with more than 282,000 customers and 74,400 employees in 190 countries. A personal champion of customer centricity, McDermott is passionate about using meetings and events to engage and motivate employees to build companies.
As a warm-up for IMEX’s official opening, a special education session was held for corporate executives to expand their knowledge of organizing meetings and events on Monday. The session was facilitated by motivational speaker Kevin Kelly, who spoke on “How exceptional execution redefines innovation and enhances engagement.”
There will be 130 educational sessions. New this year will be session formats geared toward young professionals with up to three years of industry experience, and senior professionals with eight or more years of experience.
