"The Europe of major associative and corporate events" is the result of a multi-year research project promoted by Fondazione Fiera Milano, which since 2018 has been surveying corporate and associative events with more than 1,000 participants hosted in different types of venues in Europe.
Large-scale associative and corporate events are of significant importance for the territories that host them, first of all for the short-term impacts regarding the economic effects on the hotel and service sector and the dissemination of new knowledge that contributes to innovation in vast areas of industry and research; No less relevant are the long-term impacts on communities, thanks to the development of solutions and collaborations between multiple stakeholders capable of producing a considerable impact on social well-being.
Based on the estimates made, it is possible to assume that in Europe the events with at least 1,000 participants expected for 2021 would have been a total of 2,738, up 3% compared to 2020 and 5.6% compared to 2019. Due to the pandemic, there were 1,110 in-person events, totally or in hybrid form, of which almost half (48.7%) were concentrated in 12 cities, including Milan.
Considering the period 2018-2021, the trend in the number of events peaked in 2019, the year in which the number of ICCA international association events grew above all (+31% compared to 2018), a sharp collapse in 2020 due to the pandemic (-81.9% compared to the previous year) and a rise in 2021, when the number of events grew by 136.2% compared to 2020, limiting the decrease compared to 2019 to -57.2%.