An index that ranked cities – based on their competitive strength for attracting international conventions – was unveiled at the 52^nd ICCA Congress, recently held in Dubai.

GainingEdge’s International Convention Destination Competitive Index uses 11 key drivers that influence the decision-making of associations in selecting venues. The first three drivers which account for 45 per cent of the total score are the “hygiene factors” or the essentials, such as convention centre capacity, hotel capacity and air access.

The next three drivers with 30 per cent weightage are “competitive advantage” factors. This includes the size of the destination’s association community, cost and destination appeal in both business and tourism. The remaining 25 per cent fall into “key differentiators”, which includes logistics, market size, economy, business environment, safety and stability.

GainingEdge’s CEO Gary Grimmer told TTGmice that the index for now ranks 54 cities in ICCA’s 2017 list – destinations that have hosted 150 or more international conventions. It will be expanded to more than 200 cities later.

Topping the 2018 competitive rankings of the 54 cities are Paris and Washington. Meanwhile in Asia, Singapore is the Asian leader both in terms of the number of meetings hosted and competitiveness, followed by Tokyo, Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Shanghai and Taipei.

Grimmer shared that while ICCA’s yearly statistics tell cities how much business they are hosting, the competitive index can be a standard resource in determining how much business they should be getting. He added that there is no direct correlation between the ICCA numbers and those in GainingEdge’s competitive index.

“Our index really has nothing to do with which are the most successful cities. And, we are also stressing that this is not a qualitative study. This is not about which cities are the best choices for international conventions. This is about which cities overall have the most competitive products.

“This is an assessment of how destinations compare in general, in terms of their product offerings, as well as other factors that are most frequently considered in destination decisions,” pointed out Grimmer.

Also part of the index is a scenario model which plots the cities based on two considerations: whether their business is growing or declining, and whether they are hosting more or fewer conventions than the competitive index suggests that they should.

The scenario model aims to help destinations gain insights into where they are and whether they should be in market share building mode, or market protection mode, Grimmer said.

GainingEdge has factored into the equation the “concept of fair share”. By factoring the competitive strength of destinations against the total business being produced in their competitive sets, the index can give them an indication of whether they are ahead or behind where they should be.

“Providing a means of calculating fair share will be very powerful for cities as they seek to align government expectations with the resources required to get the job done,” explained Grimmer.

He said the index has useful applications for CVBs and destinations including competition analysis, goal setting, performance measurement, strategic visioning, planning, resourcing and product development, as well as communications and branding.

The Index is available here.