With regards to multi-day conferences that took place in 2018, Maastricht can count itself among the best three conference destinations in the Netherlands. With the listing as the third congress city of the Netherlands within ‘The International Congress and Convention Association’ (ICCA) ranking, Maastricht has risen three places and we now only have Amsterdam and Rotterdam ahead of us. “We have worked hard in recent years to put Maastricht more prominently on the international congress destination map as a conference city, and we are extremely proud that these efforts are now being rewarded. Of course, there were many more congresses in Maastricht in 2018, but only 23 of these titles ultimately met the strict ICCA assessment criteria,” said Jurgen Moors, Managing Director, Maastricht Convention Bureau.
Maastricht: City of Health & Materials
Maastricht profiles itself increasingly as an international congress destination. Thanks to the unique infrastructure of the region, including the ‘Maastricht Universitair Medisch Centrum’, ‘Maastricht University’ and the various ‘Brightlands’ campuses, the region has a lot to offer. What further contributes to Maastricht’s strong proposition is the geographical location, a very wide and high-quality hotel offering and the state of the art conference center MECC Maastricht.
ICCA criteria
ICCA includes congresses of associations in its statistics and uses a number of criteria for this. Examples are: a minimum of 50 participants, organization of the congress on a regular basis (one-off meetings are not counted) and rotation between at least three countries. The ICCA list is a measure of how we as a City and Country are performing within the world of congresses. The Netherlands hosted 355 congresses last year. In addition to this type of congress, many other business meetings are organized in the Netherlands that are not included in this list.
