In May 2021, the City of Vienna and the Vienna Convention Bureau at the Vienna Tourist Board presented the Vienna Meeting Fund 2021-2023, a €4 million funding track to help Vienna's meetings industry restart. Since its launch a year ago, more than 500 applications have been submitted. Three-hundred-ninety-two congresses and corporate meetings that will take place in Meeting Destination Vienna until 2023 have received a preliminary funding commitment or have already been paid out, and by the end of 2023, the meetings supported, will generate an added value of €557 million in Vienna as a meeting destination.
Due to the enormous demand, the funding was exhausted after just one year. The City of Vienna is now making another €4 million available for the Vienna Meeting Fund 2022-2024. Applications can be submitted starting July 1, 2022 until the funding volume is exhausted and until December 2024.
The Vienna Meeting Fund 2022-2024 is now intended to further boost the meeting business in Meeting Destination Vienna.
In the first edition of the Vienna Meeting Fund, with 282, almost two-thirds of the funded events (72 percent) are congresses, 110 (28 percent) are corporate events. More than half of all these meetings (54 percent) are hybrid formats. In total, about 231,000 attendees participated or will participate in the funded meetings by the end of 2023, with half (50 percent) being international guests. Human medicine accounts for 16 percent of the disciplines represented, the business and information and communications technology (ICT) segments each account for 11 percent, and other sectors account for the remainder.
As the funding agency for the Vienna Meeting Fund, the Vienna Convention Bureau surveyed 180 event organizers about their experiences with the Vienna Meeting Fund in the previous year, 99 of whom responded. More than four-fifths (81 percent) of the respondents also confirmed that the Meeting Fund was a decisive factor in their decision to hold their meeting in Vienna.
The inaugural launch of the Vienna Meeting Fund last May marked the first time in Vienna's history that not only congresses, but also corporate meetings (company conferences) were funded. The Fund is the first broad-based Restart program in Europe that takes hybrid meetings into account in a separate funding module and is aimed not only at national but also international organizers. The funding is deliberately open to large international companies and organizations based in Vienna in the sense of strengthening Vienna's headquarters and location function. Also in its new edition 2022-2024, the Vienna Meeting Fund of the City of Vienna will be handled by the Vienna Convention Bureau in WienTourismus and can be applied for meetings that take place in Vienna until December 31, 2024.
The support will be paid out after the meeting has been held and all necessary supporting documents have been submitted; before that, applicants will receive a conditional funding commitment. The amount of funding is tied to certain criteria, including the number of participants. The maximum funding amount per event is €60,000. The later the congress or corporate event takes place, the stricter the criteria become. In 2024, for example, at least 5,000 people must attend the meeting and at least half of the participant overnight stays must come from abroad in order to reach the maximum funding amount.
For more information, visit www.vienna.convention.at.
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