Perm needs to promote itself as a venue for events and conventions

The participants in the “Convention-Exhibition Cluster” working group were the organizers of large exhibits and representatives of the government of the Perm Region. They discussed the factors that contribute to success in this area and worked out solutions and recommendations for promoting Perm as one of the country’s central venues for hosting events.

According to the group’s experts, Perm already has much to recommend it, given that it is the site of one of the most successful exhibition projects in Russia. However, since the competition is growing every year, the organizers must take on more and more ambitious tasks, consolidate their positions on the national level and promote themselves on the world level.

One very effective instrument for promoting the city’s ability to host exhibitions and events could be a convention bureau, which would work closely with the regional government. The government of the region ought to set specific goals for tourist traffic in terms of its size and composition, identify high-priority areas of the exhibition business and, most importantly, as Andrey Kurilov, the Regional Director for Business Development for ITE in Russia noted, formulate its goals and objectives with an emphasis “on local demands and the experience of the people who live here; that knowledge must be complemented by lessons learned elsewhere in Russia and around the world”.

“Making the right choice about what to specialize in will make it possible to build the right strategy”, concurred Igor Prudnikov, General Director of the IP Agency and Chairman of the subcommittee of Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation for the development of information and communication technologies in the exhibition and conference industry, who proposed concluding the group’s work by preparing a report on the exhibition and conference industry in the Perm Region and present it to the regional authorities.