In Milan, it has produced 10% of the national GDP, confirming a city in constant development, including high density of creativity, innovation, and numbers steadily rising in tourism, with a significant nod by congress.
This is the outlook traced to Fiera Milano Congressi from Milan By Numbers 2015 work of the Lab on the International Meeting Industry (LAMCI), an initiative developed by the High School of Economics and International Relations at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart).
With regard to travel, in the final related to 2015, the city recorded 11,741,374 total nights spent, of which 7,258,350 listed International (+ 17.1% on 2014) with an average annual rate of occupancy of hotel rooms equal to 69,3%. The data of 2016, though still partial, mark a trend of about + 1.5/1.8% on the previous year’s record.
To generate the 19% of the overnights contributed the meetings industry: Milan, in fact, turns out to be the third largest of the 243 cities in Italy, for indoor exhibition space and seventh by total area dedicated to conferences and events.
In 2015, the metropolitan area totaled 33,718 meetings and events for 2.27 million participants according to OICE, the Observatory of the Italian Congress and Event Management, and hosted 93 international association congresses detected by International Congress and Convention Association – (ICCA) for 64,110 participants.
To grasp the most of this evolution, transforming it into an opportunity, Bit 2017 reserved for the travel business, a prominent space on the Fieramilanocity to be staged from April 2-4, 2017. The MICE sector will be located in one of the 4 main areas along with Leisure, Luxury and Sport.
The 316 conference venues in the metropolitan area – 220 just in Milan city – represent 33.8% of the 934 structures in Lombardy and about 19.7% of those in the Northwest, while 5.5% of all the 5,407 object detection locations by OICE in Italy. (OICE is the trade association, a member of Confindustria, which represents Italian engineering organizations, architecture and consulting.)
The numbers of Milan, especially those related to research, innovation and creativity, commented Roberto Nelli, Scientific Director of the Research Lab on the International Meeting Industry, (LAMCI), show that the city has the capacity to withstand international competition in business, offering facilities at a high-skills level.
The city excels in research and development; it records 25% of all Italian design patents, while in Lombardy the investments in the research and development sector have been about 4 billion euro. Discrete data related to human resources capital discloses that Milan is the thirty-seventh of 181 world cities (according to the Cities in Motion Index).
The city of Milan reputation is ranked twenty-first out of 55 global cities (per the City RepRap) and confirms its role as the capital of fashion internationally, ranking sixth out of 56 world cities (according to The Top Global Fashion Capitals). Moreover, Milan belies his reputation as being the most expensive city (per Cost of Living Survey) and not environment friendly.
For the near future, the Lombard capital is organizing to become even more attractive for the MICE segment with an agenda that features other urban transformations, including the completion of the Porta Nuova and City Life projects and redesign of the amazing 1.25 million square meters of disused railway yards.
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