Berlin, 10 February 2011 New record for the tourism and convention metropolis Berlin: The German capital is the front runner of the German convention industry. This is the result of the convention statistics 2010 published today by the Berlin Convention Office of visitBerlin.

According to the stats, 9.1 million professional visitors came to Berlin last year; this corresponds to a ten percent increase. 113,100 events took place; 4 percent more than in 2009. A central role is played by the Berlin convention hotels. Their room nights rose by 11 percent to 5.5 million. Consequently, the economic clout of the Berlin meeting and convention market continues to increase: total sales revenues amounted to EUR 1.65 billion; this corresponds to a ten percent rise.

These results are remarkable compared to last year, as was stressed by visitBerlin CEO Burkhard Kieker: “Berlin has proven itself as a crisis-resistant leader and has been able to further expand its position as Germany’s most important meeting location. On the international level, we have been among the top 5 congress destinations in the world for many years. Nonetheless the German capital still offers an enormous potential. The doubling of meeting capacities after the refurbishment of the ICC Berlin will be helpful in this connection.”

A major contribution to the positive 2010 balance was made by the convention centres of the city, such as the ICC Berlin. The large-scale events staged there were attended by 1.2 million participants or 30 percent more than in 2009.

Furthermore, a trend towards the staging of longer events can be discerned in the German capital. At present, 35 percent of all events are multi-day events (+1%). The average duration of meetings and conventions rose by 0.2 percent to 1.9 days.

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