Elena Anna Ferrario

Convention Bureaus and Destination Marketing: the Vienna and Barcelona Case: Key Lessons for Milan Elena Anna Ferrario

The ?Mice? sector and meeting industry at large are important resources for destinations. Key actors in the promotion and in the development of meeting industry in a given destination are Convention Bureaus. Aim of this paper is therefore to give an insight of the meeting industry and to understand Convention Bureaus in a destination marketing perspective. A deep analyis on two specific realities and two Convention Bureaus is given: Vienna and Barcelona, as they are successfull examples of leading congress and conference destinations. The two realities will then be compared with Milano, which even though it is a city with potential and resources, it represents quite an atypical case in the meeting industry global scenario as it does not avail itself of a Convention Bureau. Some observations will be considered on the potential role of a Convention Bureau in Milano.