Antwerp: When the City is Your Venue!

The Antwerp Convention Bureau officially launched its commercial offer for international events at last November’s IBTM Barcelona, where it highlighted its extensive portfolio of renovated venues, unique cultural experiences in Flanders, and a team aligned with positive impacts for its local community and long-term legacies for its clients. We caught up with them for this story.

Once the most powerful business centre in the world, Antwerp today breathes cosmopolitanism and vitality, being the global axis of the diamond trade, a world-famous fashion district and boasting the second largest port in Europe with more than 60 thousand ships per year. However, its treasured and proactive local MICE industry also wants to call the shots. Since opening its doors a year ago, the Antwerp Convention Bureau (ACB) has already generated significant new conferences and exhibitions, including more than 20 major events (each with more than 500 people) over the next three years, which will see more than 21,000 people visit the city. Moving forward, this team will focus on positioning Antwerp as a premier international destination for conventions, meetings, and events looking for a city that perfectly balances intimacy with world-leading event infrastructure.

In addition to proactively marketing the city, the ACB team will also support association and corporate organisers throughout the lifecycle of any event they bring to the Belgian city. And after a year of incredible success in developing relationships with local partners, stakeholders and potential clients, HQ went through all these steps with Tadeja Pivc Coudyser, CEO of the Convention Bureau (pictured on the right): “Basically, what started to happen is that events became more and more important for Antwerp. With the expansion of our venue portfolio with Flanders Meeting & Convention Center Antwerp (FMCCA) – A Room with a Zoo, Handelsbeurs Antwerp, and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, we now have great assets to attract meeting organisers from various sectors and geographies around a vast collection of venues of different sizes and shapes, which increases the appetite for our destination.”

Held in January 2024, IAPCO EDGE Europe was perhaps the clearest test of the city’s new brand, summed up in the phrase “The city is your venue”. This seminar perfectly illustrated Antwerp’s intimate size, flexibility and welcoming mentality that turns the entire city... into a venue. From the welcome reception in the Radisson Blu’s Diamond Room to educational sessions at the (FMCCA) – A Room with a Zoo, and an immersive day at the Botanic Sanctuary Antwerp, the event highlighted the celebration of a citywide experience, embodying the essence of a holistic approach where each part of the event was integrated into the different facets and heritage of Antwerp. For instance, the (FMCCA) – A Room with a Zoo is the only convention centre in the world with its own zoo serving as both a conference venue and a philharmonic theatre with top-notch acoustics. The original, protected 19th-century architecture provides a tranquil setting for events with an integrated heritage, adjacent to the Belle Époque international station and with links to the European railway network. A historical heritage site with its monumental classical-style halls, this venue has produced a rich legacy through the Antwerp ZOO Society with its own award-winning science and research centre. In this sense, the profits from its congresses and events immediately support nature conservation efforts through animal protection, education and awareness-raising.

This partnership between meetings and conservation is in line with the industry’s desire to become more sustainable, but according to Pivc Coudyser, the association’s sustainable efforts have yet to be realised: “In my career, I’ve only had a couple of RFPs where the associations asked for sustainable and ecological venues. We all try to do it because we love our city and want to pivot responsibly while generating as little impact as possible, but unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be on the list of priorities for organisers. I think destinations and venues are taking a step forward by trying to integrate a robust set of sustainable products and services into their bidding process. Many hotels already have responsible suppliers on the outskirts of the city and quick links to the middleman, but if an association reaches out to a destination without asking for it, it is going to cost more. The change already exists in Antwerp, but it should be required in the RFP.”

The paradigm has shifted

The major post-pandemic change for Antwerp was actually bringing together strong and diverse support from different sectors and players on its Board of Directors to reinforce the unity and purpose of its ecosystem. They now have the Antwerp Hotel Association, which represents the entire hotel sector, the two biggest players in conventions and exhibitions, Antwerp Expo and (FMCCA) – A Room with a Zoo, and Voka – Antwerp Waasland Chamber of Commerce, which joined this new chapter to pivot Antwerp in the international market. “We really want to strengthen our approach to congresses, meetings and trade shows in our city, doing so in a way that connects institutions, R&D centres and partners such as Visit Antwerp, Visit Flanders, universities and business innovation hubs. I’ve always believed that getting conferences is about bringing knowledge to the city and spreading it through our key players and partners.” The city has therefore chosen five industrial clusters to attract strategic conferences, namely in the areas of life sciences and health, food and nutrition, solution-orientated engineering and technology, and smart logistics and sustainable materials, resources and chemistry.

The northern region of Belgium has been committed to developing the overall impact of its events for several years. To support associations in achieving these goals, the VisitFlanders Convention Bureau has launched a new event legacy plan in partnership with #Meet4Impact to provide fundamental principles, methodology and a practical roadmap on how to incorporate them into the planning. “If you are familiar with Visit Flanders, you will no doubt have come across the extensive work being done around impact and legacy. It is a large network of different teams and cities, working together with the same vision and towards the same goals. We are working on current and future bids to define the strategic priorities for the future.” The circular economy is also very important to their Board, which has invested heavily in this area. That’s why all these fields are interconnected: “In the area of health, for example, we have the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine, or the Vaccinopolis vaccine research centre on the Drie Eiken Campus, which opened its doors two years ago. For marine science students, we also have the Maritime Academy. Meetings and events are all about people, connections and business, and when delegates arrive in the city, we want them to feel welcome and perfectly in tune with their SDGs.”
 

The Potential for a Legacy − The 10th EuChemS Chemistry Congress

The EuChemS Chemistry Congress is a major biannual chemistry conference where chemists from all parts of Europe and beyond come together to present and discuss the latest achievements in cutting-edge chemical sciences. As we saw previously, this scientific area converges directly with one of Antwerp’s strategic sectors, and so it was with joy that they learned that the EuChemS Executive Board had chosen the offer from the Royal Flemish Chemical Society (KVCV) to organise their 10th edition in the Flemish city. “EuChemS organises several chemistry meetings around Europe, and, for us, this is a very important association to collaborate with. We started working on this bid in 2020 together with KVCV, which already has its own objectives as increasing the number of its members, raising awareness about chemistry, and making the Society even bigger,” Dominique Jansen, Lead Research at ACB and responsible for this bid, tells us.

Antwerp houses a significant chemical cluster in Europe, extending over the borders into the Netherlands and Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany. The chemical companies in these three regions are strongly interconnected and inspire innovative solutions for the global challenges of tomorrow. Besides, the area also hosts an important pharma and life sciences industry that provides opportunities for thousands of chemists who graduated from universities in the region. “As a convention bureau, you can push as hard as you want for a conference of this kind, but if there is no mutual interest from the local partner, it will most likely not happen. For us, this is a really interesting association both in terms of business and partnership, as it benefits both parties – this is the sweet spot you need to find, especially if you want to develop legacies,” adds Jansen. While this pool of players is not static and may vary depending on the city’s professional trends, there is a good idea of where they stand on a national, regional and local level. “You have to work on it all the time, socialise and promote your convention plan with them. We are now building a network of ambassadors to have a strong local network that can better advocate for the city as a convention destination in its main industrial clusters,” she concludes.