Meetings and congresses: Berlin launches pilot events

Berlin, 31 May 2021 As Berlin’s Covid rate slows, the city is poised to restart its event sector. In cooperation with visitBerlin, the Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises has developed the ‘Perspective MICE Berlin’ pilot project. Using a series of measures such as Covid-19 antigen tests, three trial events in June are assessing how business-sector meetings and congresses of up to 500 attendees can be held safely.

Ramona Pop, Senator for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises in Berlin, noted:“With falling numbers of new cases and rising vaccination rates, we can take further steps to reopen the city. Pilot projects are now a crucial factor in gathering experience. With the planned pilot events in Berlin, we are taking a major step towards restarting the event sector. In this way, we aim to show how, with supporting digital technologies, safe and corona-compliant events and congresses are possible.

Burkhard Kieker, CEO visitBerlin, commented: “As one of the first pilot events in March has already shown, measures such as rapid antigen tests and systematic hygiene schedules make safe business events a real possibility. With our new ‘Perspective MICE Berlin’ project, we are taking a pioneering role in Germany.”

There are three events running under the pilot project: 

• the Congress of Capital Medicine and Health 2021 at Messe Berlin’s CityCube (15 – 17 June), one of the leading congresses for the health system and health care sector in Germany,

• Greentech Festival for green technologies and sustainable lifestyles with a conference, exhibition, and gala awards ceremony in Kraftwerk Berlin (16 – 18 June), and

• Industry Day in the Verti Music Hall (21 – 23 June), the Federation of German Industries (BDI) annual summit with high-ranking representatives from the business, political and social spheres.

These events also provide an opportunity to test in real life a digital ‘bar code’ as proof of rapid antigen tests or COVID-19 vaccinations administered by the Charité Hospital. Moreover, the project will be gaining further insights into, for instance, optimising test procedures on site and integrating the results of decentralised test centres. The findings will later be made available to the event organisers.

In late March, with the help of rapid antigen tests, visitBerlin and the Berlin event sector already successfully held a trial run of a safe life event in Estrel Berlin with around 100 attendees. This trial event showed the vast majority of participants readily accepting negative antigen tests and adherence to hygiene schedules as a necessary part of visiting events.

Supporting the relaunch of the MICE sector with the Berlin Congress Fund

With its Berlin Congress Fund, the city of Berlin is preparing the ground for reopening Berlin’s MICE sector after the pandemic. The Fund provides, under certain conditions, for financial assistance for national event organisers in planning their events in a location or hotel in the city. Applications for funding can be submitted on kongressfonds.berlin.de. The atene KOM company has been commissioned as the lead partner in realising the programme.