This month we feature one of our newest members: GCB German Convention Bureau as part of an ongoing series highlighting EIC Association and Corporate Members and the important work they are doing to serve our shared industry.
GCB German Convention Bureau
- Website: gcb.de and www.germany-meetings.com
- Managing Director: Matthias Schultze
- EIC Member Since: 2024
- Headquarters: Frankfurt, Germany
- Membership: Approximately 420 companies (suppliers) from the German business events industry
The GCB German Convention Bureau — established in 1973 and currently with offices in Frankfurt, New York, and Beijing — represents Germany as an internationally leading and sustainable destination for conferences and meetings. Its primary goal is to secure and expand this leading position both quantitatively and qualitatively.
“Business events are one of the essential tools for solving complex issues. People coming together in a professional context ensure knowledge transfer, form networks, and thus provide the platforms on which answers to the big questions of our time are developed.”
— Matthias Schultze, Managing Director, GCB
As a catalyst for innovation, the GCB provides its approximately 420 member companies with high-quality market research data and insights. Through the development of targeted marketing activities, the GCB is active both internationally and nationally, supporting its members and partners (including hotels, convention centres, venues, city marketing organisations, event agencies, and other service providers in the German business events sector) with a comprehensive range of services. These include trade shows and customer events, seminars, market research and scientific studies, as well as an extensive network of contacts for promoting their offerings.
A team of 21 employees across all three GCB locations drives the strategic development of Germany as a meetings destination, working closely with a broad network of partners. The GCB receives significant support from its founders and strategic partners: the German National Tourist Board, Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Lufthansa, and its strategic exhibition partner, the IMEX Group.
Key programmes or initiatives for 2024
Future Meeting Space
The Future Meeting Space (FMS) innovation network was launched in 2015 by the GCB German Convention Bureau and the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO with the goal of boosting the role of business events as a driver of innovation and an essential instrument of corporate communication.
Providing trends research, FMS anticipates relevant developments in the business event ecosystem and identifies requirements for successful events as regards concepts, technology, and event spaces. The innovation network develops topic-specific and distinct recommendations for different stakeholder groups and regularly validates them in a real-life lab with what is happening within the industry in practice.
After having completed its 2023 research on “Creating Meaningful Events in Challenging Times,” FMS will focus on a different topic in 2024: “Emerging Opportunities, Persisting Classics, Fading Models: Business Events in a Transformative Era.” The GCB and Fraunhofer IAO, together with their research partners, will identify which processes, products and services in the business events ecosystem will remain, disappear, and newly emerge in the future.
This explorative research will identify opportunities for all stakeholders along the customer journey of business events at an early stage and enable organisers and event service providers alike to make well-informed, data-driven decisions.
ebx.lab
The GCB’s new event format “ebx.lab – The Strategic Innovation Workshop for Events, Brands, and Experiences” is a platform for strategically discussing the next generation of business events in the communication mix of companies and organisations. It provides an agile and creative field of experimentation, enabling marketing and communication managers from different sectors to share ideas on strategic challenges in a protected setting and to jointly develop new solutions.
In its first edition in 2023, ebx.lab focused on Artificial Intelligence: How can AI be harnessed in a meaningful way for the next generation of business events? Where is it relevant and how can organisations get AI-ready?
In the second edition of ebx.lab, the event’s community will be taking stock of the German-speaking business events scene. How ready are we for the big changes coming to the world of events, brands, and experiences? Where are the untapped opportunities? And how can we come together to create tangible solutions that benefit both our organizations and our wider community? At the core of these questions are three key areas that are already shaping and will continue to challenge us: sustainability, digitalization, and generational shifts in the workplace.
“We at the GCB therefore see it as our foremost task to lead business events into the future and to provide the necessary impetus, whether it involves sustainability, digitalization, generational change, or diversity, equity, and inclusion.” — Matthias Schultze, Managing Director, GCB
