Three global associations serving the international meetings Industry – AIPC (The International Association of Convention Centres), ICCA (The International Congress and Convention Association), and UFI (The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry) – have launched a Global Alliance.
All three associations will be collaborating more closely in the future, and generate more comprehensive and better aligned benefits for their respective members.
The alliance has agreed to begin a programme of exploring exchange and reciprocity in four areas: educational content, research, standards and advocacy.
The three partners will begin by engaging in a series of educational exchanges incorporating each other’s knowledge content into their respective conferences, and align approaches taken to areas of common practice such as research and advocacy activities, immediately. At the same time they are initiating a regular exchange between their respective leaderships to align interests on issues like standards, terminology and best practices.
“We are all organisations with a global membership and perspective and already complement each other’s activities in various ways”, said Aloysius Arlando, AIPC’s president. “However, as the business models of exhibitions, congresses, conferences, and other types of business meetings evolve, the overlap of global associations servicing the industry is growing even further.”
“This carries the risk of competition replacing collaboration as the driving force for industry associations. With our Global Alliance, the three of us choose value for our members, choose collaboration over competition,” added Craig Newman, UFI’s president.
In addition to the immediate practical outcomes, the partners believe the Alliance also offers potential to enhance the credibility of the industry as a whole by providing a vehicle for development of greater consistency within a mutually agreed industry framework.
