Representatives of the Spanish Association of Congress Centres (APCE), led by its chairman and non-executive managing director of the Congress Centre of Valencia, Jose Salinas, and the vice-chairman Carlos Garcia Espinosa, met recently with Javier Gomez-Navarro, president of the Higher Council of Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Navigation of Spain, at the institution’s Madrid headquarters.
The double aim of the meeting was to underline the importance of business tourism in Spain – one of the world’s leading exponents of the MICE industry – and highlight the influence of the country’s congress centres as an engine of growth for the cities where they are located. So, during the meeting the accent was put on the key financial results of 2009, a year in which the member centres hosted nearly 6,000, events with five million attendees, and generated revenues to the tune of 1,900 million EUR.
The meeting was proposed on the occasion of the coming celebration of the 15th anniversary of the association. A great effort has been made to strengthen APCE since its creation, with the aim of converting the association into one of the chief national actors in the meetings and event industry.
The role played by the chambers of commerce through their presence in the organizational structure and the board of directors of many of APCE member centres was one of the various matters broached during the meeting, as well as the possibility of establishing closer ties between both institutions so as to accomplish a common goal.
In this way, APCE and the Council of Chambers have joined forces in their bid for promoting Spanish tourism, above all business tourism, with an eye to sustaining the position of a country that knows how to adapt to new market conditions, while maintaining the quality, variety and attractiveness of its products and services.
