In its role of a location dedicated to dialogue with politics and Public Administration within the BTC, the main Italian trade exhibition in the field of business tourism, held in Florence on November 11 and 12, the Politicians’ Forum has sought to give this ‘year, a strong sign of proactive and concrete, leading to synthesis the industry’s proposals and enclosing them in a consensus document presented to the organic structure and political interlocutors. This is the White Paper of the Italian Congress (conducted by Meeting Consultants invitation Federcongressi & events and BTC), the first attempt at a serious investigation and complete the positioning of the Italian destination in the international meeting industry and what the national and local governments can do to overcome the critical issues and support the field.
The document opens enphasizing the gap between the incidence in spending on business travel in Europe over the entire tourism expenditure (24%) and in Italy (19%). The contraction of domestic demand stems largely from the economic crisis, but it would be misleading and simplistic to reduce it to that. Outside the country, in fact, the convention bureaux are considered of public or institutional governance models that can involve public administrations at different levels (government, regions and municipalities), reserving a stronger role to private economic contribution in the provision of services for conferences and events acquired. Based on this simple but rough realization, and after analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the Italian destination, the White Paper presented eight concrete proposals of the companies in the sector to benefit from the resources and strengthen the contribution of the conference economic development of the country and the areas directly affected. Here’s a quick summary: – Locate the next 20 years, a development strategy in the areas of greatest vocation for events and international conferences. – Transport: develop intermodal train-plane to make more accessible the congress destinations. – Hotels: more quality and convenience; introduce urban plans to increase the size, simplify permits for renovations and construction, introduce a uniform national hotel classification. – Connectivity: Broadband everywhere. – Communicate to defeat the prejudices that penalize Italy aroud the world. – New tax measures, since the transformation of the tourist tax in purpose tax for overnight stays related to events and conferences, for development of the sector or incentives for promoters of events. – Put on the net who can facilitate the acquisition of events: local and central institutions, public and private, departments, government agencies, universities, companies and associations; development of actions co-marketing, with the provision of the assets of public buildings and valuable support to the promoters of events with application letter and meetings with international delegations. – Information and training, starting with the establishment, be borne by the government, an Italian Conference Observatory and Event Management to monitor the performance of the sector.
For further details please refer to the full text of the White Paper of the Italian Congress, freely available and downloadable from the Internet
http://media.eventreport.it/media/attach/2014/11/Libro_Bianco_del_Congressuale_Italiano.pdf