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The study on the sector presented by the Spain Convention Bureau highlights that people participating in these events spend 330% more than the average conventional tourist.

Meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions tourism, the so-called MICE tourism, is preparing to leave behind the crisis caused by the pandemic by appealing to its great potential and its capacity to generate wealth and progress. This is what is revealed in the Study on Meetings Tourism and the Reactivation Strategy presented recently at the headquarters of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces by the Spain Convention Bureau (SCB), the entity that brings together more than fifty MICE tourism destinations throughout Spain and in which Galicia has four representatives: A Coruña Tourism and Congress Consortium, Pontevedra Convention Bureau, Santiago de Compostela Convention Bureau and Vigo Convention Bureau Foundation.

The report shows that the sector has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic and that recovery will be slower than for tourism in general. It predicts that national demand for congress tourism “will gain momentum in the last quarter of 2022, that international demand will evolve more gradually, and is expected to be 50% recovered by the end of 2022”, although it will be necessary to wait until 2024 to reach pre-pandemic data.

But it also highlights the great importance of a sector that generates around 87,000 direct jobs in Spain as a whole, which represents 8.32% of the total number of jobs related to tourism, and which during the last year before the pandemic, 2019, generated an impact of 12,000 million euros. The report puts the number of people who travelled during that year to participate in meetings, congresses, fairs and similar events at 10 million, and details that the expenditure they made was 330% more than the average conventional tourist, which gives even more value to this activity as a source of progress and economic development.

The study also establishes some of the lines of work that the sector must follow in Galicia and Spain to position the country as a world leader: public-private collaboration, commitment to sustainability, promoting integration between the visitor and the local population, and taking advantage of the opportunities offered by a multi-sector business and the increase in global demand.