WHAT IS AN ICC?
You might expect a city of London’s scale and stature to already have a major international convention centre (ICC).
London certainly does have many fine international conference, exhibition and meeting venues. However, these venues only meet a certain type of demand from the market given their size and the consequent limitation on numbers of people that can be catered for.
What London currently doesn’t have is a large-scale, purpose-built ICC.
Internationally, there is a thriving market worth an estimated £100bn a year for large conferences and conventions accommodating anything up to 20,000 delegates. This is a growing market that London currently doesn’t compete in, despite its undoubted strong destination appeal, excellent international accessibility and high recognition.
Typically, ICCs are purpose-built venues with:
• A main tiered auditorium for 3,000-5,000
(flexible and divisble)
• 2 or 3 additional meeting spaces of about
800 and 400 capacity
• Immediately adjacent meeting and exhibition space (10,000 sq m, flexible and divisible)
• A range of breakout rooms for 50-500 delegates
• The ability to provide catered functions for the delegates
• Hotel accommodation of varying standards on-site or nearby
Cultural and economic benefits, in addition to prestige, have underwritten convention centres in the major cities of Europe, North America and Asia. A number of new purpose-built or extended venues have emerged over the last decade in an attempt to capture a share of what is seen as a burgeoning yet increasingly competitive market. This intensity of new development around the world looks set to continue.
To date, London has lacked a purpose-built convention centre of sufficient size to rival many other European and international cities. There is both anecdotal and factual evidence to suggest that London is losing ground as a world-class destination for international meetings and is failing to achieve its potential to bring substantial and lasting economic benefits to London and the rest of the UK as a result.
London is in the position of turning away some business because we do not have the capacity to manage it. One collection of central London venues turned away an estimated £20m a year and another major London venue lost the equivalent of 330 event days both due to lack of availability of their venue as well as due to other constraints. The main reason for these constraints is that most London venues have another purpose which takes precedence over the convention market.
Of the top London conference venues (those that can accommodate a minimum of 950 delegates in a single room) there are three exhibition venues, five arts and entertainment venues, one academic venue, one multi-event venue, one that is closing down. Of the purpose-built venues, the largest of which holds 1900 delegates in its largest room, eight are hotels and none of the other three have the capacity to take more than 1000 delegates.
Organisers argue that whilst there are some large venues in London, including ExCel, Earls Court and the Royal Albert Hall, there is a lack of flexibility of use that they would expect of a purpose-built convention centre of the type London is competing against. London has limited ability to compete for the 39 per cent of international meetings that happened in 2002 that required space for over 500 delegates and cannot compete at all for the eight per cent that require venues of over 2000, the fastest growing sector of the market.
The second annual meeting of the London Leadership Forum on Business Tourism, in March 2004, brought London’s position into stark relief. The Forum, which brings together the 100 or so leading players in the capital’s business tourism industry, was given the ‘buyer’s view’ of London and the reasons why they don’t book their major conventions in the capital. More information on the Forum and its findings can be found at www.lda.gov.uk
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