BE A RISK PARTNER Risk has become a top priority for associations, and Sirk explains that people have been shaken into realising the world is much more uncertain than they thought it was. “Destinations that can become good risk partners and can help to, for example, coordinate the risk policies of their stakeholders - the hotels, the venues, suppliers, so that when an association chooses a destination, it can help to mitigate all the risk: that’s going to be a powerful driver.” Along with being a trusted destination that can practically show how it mitigates risk for the meeting, Sirk adds that destinations should also be striving to be ‘experiment partners.’ “Associations are revaluating and experimenting, and so if a destination can express that they are willing to experiment with them and help them with those experiments, it helps put them in the frame.”
how they can reduce or offset the emissions the event will produce, before it’s happened,” adds Cunningham. “These tools can also help connect the association institutions and NGOs, to create partnerships that help advance the destination and the association.”
DON’T RELY ON HISTORICAL DATA
“Calculating where international conferences would go next used
to be predictable,” says Martin Sirk , owner of strategic consultancy Sirk Serendipity. “Every couple of years the association would rotate in a certain pattern. You knew roughly what the numbers were going to be, you knew whether they would have an exhibition. You could gather that information through the Union of historical data that helped you to predict the future as a destination. “History is now dead. These old assumptions no longer hold. Predictability based on historical patterns has been upended, and destinations need to ask much more searching questions to find out associations’ new aims, not rely on past patterns and norms.” Associations have used the pandemic to International Associations or through ICCA. There were sources of
SOLVING THE BIG ISSUES Intellectual capitals and knowledge hubs can be seen as essential drivers for winning association conferences,
but Sirk suggests a destination might look to the association to solve a problem it has rather than showcasing the solutions it’s already found. “I call it the barbell strategy. You either go for
your top university professors, Nobel Prize winners, the Max Planck Institute, or you go for the fact that you have a big problem that needs solving. This could be a hospital system, high levels of pollution, or high levels of diabetes
We look for destinations that are ready to build partnerships around the whole ecosystemof congresses
revaluate their entire strategy around international meetings. “Should they have a single large annual meeting that rotates between different parts of the world? Do they go for a hub-and-spoke type arrangement? Or do they go thematic? Do they organise a myriad number of smaller meetings?” Sirk adds. Starting afresh means destinations must have a more sophisticated approach to their research, their targeting and working out what the association is planning.
among the population. The fact that you can articulate a strong need is another good argument for bringing in organisations that want to make a powerful impact. “In many cases, they don’t want to go where the problem has been solved, they want to go where they can change minds, change government policy, influence inward investment.” But don’t be in the middle - not having great expertise and not having a particularly big problem is a bad place to be for a destination.
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