European Cities tackle Indian market

cities
cities
Avatar of Linda Hohnholz
Written by Linda Hohnholz

ECM, the European network of city tourist offices and convention bureaus, has just gone through a series of marketing activities in the Indian outbound conference, meetings and incentive market in thr

ECM, the European network of city tourist offices and convention bureaus, has just gone through a series of marketing activities in the Indian outbound conference, meetings and incentive market in three different cities last week: Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmadabad.

โ€œBRIC markets and in particular India, are important source markets for European Cities. The Indian economy is strong and never really felt the impact of the global economic crisis as we did in Europe. There is a huge middle class segment emerging together with a significant high net worth, luxury segment and there is a lot of interest in travel to Europe. Our belief and experience indicates that Europe is more attractive as an โ€œideaโ€ than a set of individual countries and that cities are far more interesting than the countries they belong to.โ€ declares Ignasi de Delร s, ECM President.

A yearly roadshow to 3 Indian cities

Based on the success of last year with more than 200 clients during the whole week, ECM provided its members cities with a yearly roadshow with 3 luncheons and social events to brand ECM as a roof organisation for 110 European cities and particularly those who attend the event.
The originality of this workshop, organized in cooperation with tmf, relies in the wide range of communication, telemarketing and social media activities, giving ECM a complete promotion platform consisting of event buildโ€up and followโ€up. See www.experientialplanner.com

Training local partners

The innovative part of the collaboration with tmf will be a workshop dedicated to cityโ€™s local partners. This event will help preparing the cityโ€™s local partners to be ready for business leads coming from Indian planners and through their CVB. โ€œThe cityโ€™s local partners will learn about opportunities and challenges of a huge market, some cultural aspects reaching into MICE relationships, about groups already handled in Europe and in their city and other key points in doing business with India. The first edition held in Berlin on May 26 was a tremendous success!โ€ outlines Heike Mahmoud, director Conventions Visit Berlin, Berlin Conventions Office and ECM Vice-president for the Meetings Industry.

Heike Mahmoud, Vice- President of European Cities Marketing, concluded: โ€œCities never stand still. In the future every city will need to compete globally for their fair share of talent, business, meetings and tourism. We are thrilled that we can now offer this outstanding opportunity to all of our members in India.โ€

The Annual Roadshow took place in Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmadabad, from July 14-17, 2014 and involved the cities of Barcelona, Berlin, Bilbao, Salzburg, Vienna and Zagreb. You can follow the event on www.experientialplanner.com or ECM Facebook page.

About the author

Avatar of Linda Hohnholz

Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

Share to...