Paris: Supporting meetings, research and innovation

Magazine:
20th Aug, 2015
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What more can be said about Paris, the most visited city in the world? Apart from old favourites like the Eiffel Tower or Le Louvre, there are thousands of other must-sees. While shopping in the city is second to none, visitors love the left bank’s shops, Saint-Germain des Prés, the Champs Elysées and the Marais district. But Paris is renewing itself all the time. This is also true when it comes to meetings: after all the economic dynamism of Paris and its surrounding region has always relied on research and innovation.

Multi-faceted, booming economy
While Paris accounts for 19% of the total Ile-de-France population, Paris Region’s multi-faceted economy is unparalleled in Europe, packed with high-tech clusters - there are 8 national and global competitiveness clusters - and research centres that rank among the global and European leaders. Paris Region’s sectors of excellence range from aeronautics, cosmetics, health and biotechnologies to logistics and financial services, just to name a few.

This unique economic profile generates cross-sector research projects and a healthy spirit of competition transcending traditional sector boundaries and creating entirely new specialist fields: if Paris Region has always had, historically, a global influence in the field of life sciences, it knows how to combine, like no other destination, ICT and healthcare, for example, or automotive and eco-technologies. With the world-famous CNRS and the Institut Pasteur, Paris concentrates renowned research institutions. Besides, it has the highest hospital group with “Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris” which gathers 24,000 beds in 37 hospitals, representing 50% of the French clinical research, and owns a unique and unmatched medical database.

In addition to being a business hub boasting a privileged quality of life and the world’s third concentration of Fortune 500 head offices, Paris Region also hosts virtually all the key French industry players, all of them global leaders in their respective markets. Many multinational corporations have chosen to locate their headquarters and strategic functions, whether the executive management, human resources or marketing, in Paris Region.

Paris’ dynamic economy is boosted by its many research and development projects, leading Europe with more than 600,000 students, 83,000 scientists and technicians, 17 universities and 400 research institutions and higher education, and 3% of the regional GDP spent each year on R&D. In this regard, the Paris Region Startup Ecosystem is literally booming. Already home to major successes like Deezer, Dailymotion and Criteo, Paris provides support to smaller but fast-growing companies. 3,000 startups benefit from a great infrastructure network: incubators, accelerators and other co-working initiatives play a crucial role in helping entrepreneurs meet and connect with like-minded self-starters.

It should come hardly as a surprise that Paris ranks n°1 worldwide for intellectual capital and innovation, according to the latest edition of Cities and Opportunities released by PwC. This spirit, along with a healthy competitive climate, might well find its epitome with the future opening of the Halle Freyssinet, the world’s largest digital business incubator designed to create and consolidate a unique digital ecosytem in the region and to host 1,000 startups.

Another innovative incubator is the Welcome City Lab for tourism-related startups. Located in the heart of Paris, the 1000m2 site, the only initiative of its kind in the world, includes an open-plan space for collaboration and conference rooms for the thirty or so start-ups, which, in addition, enjoy the use of an experimentation area, a monitoring unit, easy access to finance services as well as a press service. It houses both original companies like Marins d’Eau Douce, a hire company set up by two sailing enthusiasts, and more traditional businesses like tour operator Worldia. “The Welcome City Lab gathers more than 30 startups with a common objective: innovate and create new tools in order to improve the Parisian tourist offer”, says Nicolas Lefebvre, member of the Board and Managing Director of the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Paris at a glance
• More than 150,000 bedrooms in the Paris Region
• Two main international airports and 92.7 million passengers in 2014
• One of the worlds’ cheapest and most comprehensive city transport networks
• 18 major conference venues
• N°1 at the ICCA rankings for the second year in a row
• Attractive and prestigious cultural destination
• An infinite number of possibilities for social events

Associations in Paris
Associations report an average of 20% higher attendance for international meetings held in Paris. The city is a major attraction as a destination for a meeting, and many attendees of course opt to tag some leisure time onto their trip. Because attendance is so high in Paris, it is a not-to-be-missed opportunity for associations to broadcast their work to a larger audience and attract more sponsorship. “As the city with the most dynamic economy in the Euro zone, Paris is seen by professionals worldwide as a hub for business tourism”, says Jean-François Martins, deputy mayor in charge of tourism.

This attraction has been once more confirmed by the ICCA (International Congress and Convention Association) statistics released earlier this year, in which Paris ranks as the ‘world’s number one city for hosting international congresses’, with 214 international congresses (attended by at least 50 participants and rotating in three countries) organised in the French capital in 2014.

These rankings come in addition to the survey published by the Paris Convention Bureau and Visitors Bureau on “Congress activity in Paris in 2014”. “The survey has identified 687,230 delegates and 976 congresses hosted in Paris last year, which represented an average of 2.6 meetings per day”, says Cécile Mairaville, Congress Director at the Paris Convention Bureau.

To get to this level, all stakeholders must work hand in hand, and Paris may have understood this like no other destinations. Public authorities, suppliers, hotels, the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau constantly unify their efforts to promote, market and sell the destination to event organisers.

Worth noting is that Air-France KLM developed the Air France-KLM Global Meetings product to make the life of organisers and participants easier. Under the agreement, planners can benefit from full online event registration, guaranteed cheaper flights, direct online access to promotional material, etc., while delegates get premium rates in all classes of transport, earn more miles with Air France-KLM loyalty programme, etc.

More info
convention.parisinfo.com

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