AIPC Communiqué – Regional Summits – June 2023

AIPC has relaunched its regional summits this year, with meetings taking place in Johannesburg (Feb 2023), Costa Rica (Oct. 2023) and Kuala Lumpur (Nov. 2023). The purpose is to increase the engagement with the members in those regions and obtain a better understanding of specific requirements in terms of professional education, research or networking. 

From the start – back in 1958 – AIPC had global ambitions, which have resulted into today’s global AIPC Community. We have members in almost 60 countries and have the ambition to further increase our geographical footprint, focusing on Africa and India in the next two years, as we realize that the expected increase in trade in these regions will result in a booming event market and therefore an increased need for the value AIPC brings. 

Each new addition brings value to the association and its members in terms of knowledge, sharing of best practices and – very important – it stimulates the continuous improvement of AIPC’s value proposal in terms of products & services to offer/develop. 

This global approach also allowed us to have global companies as business partners, with a win-win on different levels. Just as example: Steve MacKenzie, Chief Innovation Officer at Momentus Technologies, is a permanent teacher at the yearly AIPC Academy, providing upcoming venue leaders to opportunity unique access to an industry leader. The same goes for Populous’ design director Adam Paulitsch. 

We have however noticed that it is not always easy for members to attend our global events, which – with the exception of the Annual Conference – take place in Europe and are linked to industry events such as IMEX or IBTM. That is why we are re-launching the regional summits.  

The first regional meeting – the Africa Summit – took place in February, in conjunction with Meetings Africa, the largest industry event on the continent and was open to both AIPC-members and non-members. While attendance was slightly lower than expected, the interaction with the African convention center leaders present did allow to identify a set of actions to be rolled out, including a second edition of the Africa Summit, planned to take place in Kigali, Rwanda in 2024. With trade within Africa expected to grow substantially by 2035 – triggering an equally important growth of organized events – it is indeed important for AIPC to be present in Africa and increase its footprint. 

The same goes for the two summits planned later this year, in Costa Rica (October) and Kuala Lumpur (November) respectively. They will both be open to the regional community of convention center leaders, with the key objective to share knowledge and best practices in both directions.  

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our members and business partners for their support in organizing these summits, both from an operational and content perspective.