No more boring business events

The 1,099 offers from 20 SCIB employees resulted in a total of 589 meetings in 2023, up by more than 200 compared with the previous year, and sales amounted to CHF 66.3 million. Most of the hotel overnight stays in 2023 were generated by incentive travel, at 51.3%, followed by congresses, at 28.1%.

The needs of event planners and the requirements for business events have undergone significant changes in recent years and on a global scale. The focus here is increasingly on personal contact and dialogue rather than on simply providing information, especially since the pandemic. Switzerland Tourism (ST) identified this trend early on and drew up a list of over 50 special venues for this purpose in 2023. These can be found at MySwitzerland.com/meetings.

From a castle to an aquarium

The criteria for consideration: The venue must be located within or in close proximity to congress centres and congress hotels, offer an exceptional setting for inspiring group work and promote exchange between those attending. The more than 50 offers include the following locations, for example:

• Burgdorf Castle Youth Hostel in Burgdorf BE
• Aquatis in Lausanne VD, Europe’s largest freshwater aquarium and vivarium
• The “Eventfloss” events raft on Lake Zurich ZH
• La Cabuche, a small house nestled in the Domaine Dugerdil vineyards in Dardagny GE
• Community House Löchligaischt in Eschenz TG
• Hotel Pilatus Kulm on the Pilatus LU

A noticeable rise in visits to MySwitzerland.com/meetings

ST has integrated these extraordinary venues into its communications and used them in its e-mail newsletters, LinkedIn posts and digital campaigns. These actions led to an above-average rise in the number of visits to MySwitzerland.com/meetings. Over the course of 2023, ST recorded just under 475,000 visits to the meetings page. By way of comparison, such visits numbered 123,000 in 2022. This sharp rise is attributable to the digital recovery campaign, but also to the new measurement method that was introduced across MySwitzerland.com.

An interactive planning tool has been added to MySwitzerland.com/meetings, which can be used to compile a list of suitable venues and supporting programmes by means of a filter function, depending on the requirements of the planned business event in question.

Support from many partners

During the search for these exceptional locations for seminars, training courses and other corporate events, ST was able to rely on the great support of the partner destinations and regions of Basel, Bern, Davos-Klosters, Engelberg, Geneva, Interlaken, Lausanne, Lucerne, Montreux, Engadin St. Moritz, St. Gallen-Lake Constance, Zurich, and the regions of Bern, Vaud, Eastern Switzerland, Ticino and Lucerne-Lake Lucerne.

Facts and figures