Convention Bureaus and Destination Marketing

The “Mice” sector and meeting industry at large are important resources for destinations.Key actors in the promotion and in the development of meeting industry in a given destination are Convention Bureaus.Aim of this paper is therefore to give an insight of the meeting industry and to understand Convention Bureaus in a destination marketing perspective.A deep analyis on two specific realities and two Convention Bureaus is given: Vienna and Barcelona, as they are successfull examples of leading congress and conference destinations.The two realities will then be compared with Milano, which even though it is a city with potential and resources, it represents quite an atypical case in the meeting industry global scenario as it does not avail itself of a Convention Bureau. Some observations will be considered on the potential role of a Convention Bureau in Milano.