Following the recent announcement that Berlin and Houston have become full members of the BestCities Global Alliance, all ten CEOs of the partner organisations have come together, for the first board meeting of the year, in Frankfurt at IMEX 2012.
The ten convention bureaux CEO’s from Berlin, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Dubai, Edinburgh, Houston, Melbourne, San Juan, Singapore and Vancouver are attending IMEX to maximize networking and business opportunities for their respective cities as well as to take part in a series of BestCities related activities.
Pictured L-R: are the “BestCities Top Ten”: Neil Mullanaphy (San Juan), Jerard Bachar (Dubai), Neeta Lachmandas-Sakellariou (Singapore), Burkhard Kieker (Berlin), Greg Ortale (Houston), Cheryl Mulder-Verbruggen (Cape Town), Karen Bolinger (Melbourne), Richard Yore (Vancouver), Sue Stuart (Edinburgh) and Lars Benhard Jorgensen (Copenhagen).
The partners met for their tri-annual board meeting where BestCities Board Chair, Jerad Bachar personally welcomed Greg Ortale, President and CEO of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau and Burkhard Kieker CEO of vistBerlin to the Board.
“BestCities’ mission is to deliver the world’s best convention bureau practices through a unique and innovative partnership of the world’s top convention cities and we are thrilled to bring together, what we consider to be, the “top ten”, said Mr Bachar.
“Each one of our partners represents a city that is unique, vibrant and rich in cultural and historical depth and our newest members, Berlin and Houston, bring another dimension to the alliance that is very exciting for the future of BestCities,” he said.
A dinner is also scheduled where the group will meet with a number of clients specially selected for their interest in meeting the BestCities partners. Some of these international associations have already held their conference in at least one BestCities destination.
They include, amongst others, the International League against Epilepsy the International Society of Nephrology, Human Genome Organisation (HUGO), the Society for Experimental Biology, the International Diabetes Federation and the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry.
Making the most of their time together in Frankfurt, the Alliance Business Development Group will meet to discuss the implementation of various sales activities for the alliance and several BestCities bureaux will attend a leads exchange session where participants share information about an association meeting that they have recently won or hosted.
At the end of a busy few days, the BestCities team will then go a little bit “Hollywood”, filming scenes for a new video being produced by the film unit of Wonderful Copenhagen. The video will be ready for launch in Edinburgh later this year.
