Bangkok named best city in Asia-Pacific for international conventions
Bangkok topped the list of cities with the highest “harnessing ratio” in Asia-Pacific in the latest GainingEdge report on the intellectual capital of conference destinations.
The consulting firm developed this “harnessing ratio” concept to help meetings and convention destinations assess how effective they are at attracting bids for summits.
The harnessing ratio analysis is based on the assumption that cities with more active leaders on the boards of international associations will bring more forums to the city.
According to the report, Bangkok has 194 local leaders active on the boards of global organisations, which has helped them draw up to 123 meetings to the capital since 2018.
This resulted in Bangkok being given a harnessing ratio of 63.4 per cent.
Bangkok was followed by Shanghai (51.7 per cent), Singapore (50.8 per cent), Taipei (45.9 per cent) and Kuala Lumpur (44.3 per cent).
Bangkok also came in at No 6 globally, after Prague (95 per cent), Dublin (81.9 per cent), Lisbon (81.8 per cent), Montreal (77.2 per cent) and Berlin (64.7 per cent).
Chiruit Isarangkun Na Ayutthaya, Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB) director, said the agency has initiated a programme to appoint local leaders or well-known experts to become convention ambassadors.
He said TCEB recently appointed convention ambassadors in the medical and robotics industries to attract meetings related to these two sectors.
He added that TCEB plans to appoint more convention ambassadors to cover other industries such as food and agriculture, which is in line with Thailand’s 4.0 policy and Bio-Circular-Green economy.
