Report on the Meetings and Events Industry in Poland 2023 released

As every year, in cooperation with city and regional convention bureaux, recommended organizers of congresses and incentive travel, as well as international organizations and associations, the Poland Convention Bureau of the Polish Tourist Organization (PCB PTO) has produced a report on the “Meetings and Events Industry in Poland 2023”, a summary of the achievements of the meetings industry in 2022.

The “State of the Meetings & Events Industry in Poland – Poland Meetings and Events Industry Report 2023” is designed to provide the broadest possible overview of the current state of the meetings and events industry in Poland for 2022. The report consists of the following sections:

1. Data provided by international organizations and associations such as ICCA and UIA.
2. Research methodology
3. Data collected by city and regional conference bureaux (the so-called national survey).
4. Information provided by congress and incentive travel organizers recommended by the Polish Tourist Organization, including PCO and ITC.
5. Trade fairs – optimistic about the future, i.e. summaries, challenges and actions
6. Vademecum of the Laboratory of Creators – Trade fairs as an important element of e-marketing communication modelled on the activities of the Poland Convention Bureau at the meetings industry trade fair IMEX 2023

For this year’s report, city and regional convention bureaux, as well as the G2A Arena Exhibition and Convention Center of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship, provided information on 12,554 meetings and events in 2022, each attended by at least fifty people. Poland recorded a 96 percent increase in reported data from 2021. The manner in which the national survey was conducted – the collection of event data by city and regional convention bureaux – gives us a broad perspective of the state of the meetings industry in Poland; after all, this is not a comprehensive description of these events nationwide.

The 14^th  “Meetings and Events Industry in Poland” report summarizes the achievements of the meetings industry over the past year. As forecast by experts from Oxford Economics in 2020, in 2022, our sector began to make up for the losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is extremely gratifying to see an average increase of 120 percent in the number of events compared to 2021 in all cities presented in this report. For another year in a row, we had the highest number of corporate and incentive events (51 percent), while conferences and congresses accounted for 42 percent. We also had fairs and exhibitions”, said President of the Polish Tourism Organization Rafał Szmytke.

Additional articles presenting the latest trends, research or the most interesting projects and implementations are also a tradition and a permanent feature of the report. To mark the 30^th anniversary of the Polish Chamber of Exhibition Industry, which falls this year, one of the articles concerned the exhibition industry and its importance and role in the development of the Polish economy and  promotion of Poland.

Another article was produced as part of the Vademecum of the Laboratory of Creators, on the Poland Convention Bureau’s communication activities at this year’s IMEX trade fair in Frankfurt, which proved the importance of proper e-marketing communication in creating and presenting an attractive and consistent image of Poland.

– This is the fourteenth time we have thanked all the municipal and regional partners who have joined in collecting data in their area. Our thanks go out to the recommended congress and incentive travel organizers for providing the data compiled in the chapter on the analysis of meetings and events they organized in 2022. Collating data is not one of the most exciting activities, but I hope that the results of your work over one or sometimes several years (congresses are, after all, gathered over many years) jointly obtained  and presented in this study, will make you proud and will be a signpost for the next year”,  the head of the PCB PTO’s Meetings and Events Office, Aneta Książek, said in summary.

Key findings from each city

Taking a closer look at individual cities: 315 events were reported by the Bydgoszcz Convention Bureau (+67 percent), 1,367 by the Gdansk Convention Bureau (+156 percent), 1,300 by the Krakow Convention Bureau (+5 percent), 889 by the Lodz Convention Bureau (+118 percent), 1,965 by the Poznan Convention Bureau (+183 percent), 144  by the G2 Arena in Rzeszow, 268 by the Szczecin Convention Bureau Project, 5,277 by the Warsaw Convention Bureau (+125 percent) and 1,019 by the Convention Bureau – Wrocław (+195 percent)