IMPACT – Congresses, Events & Sustainability

In IMPACT, we are responsible for creating broad and long-term value through the attraction and development of international knowledge congresses, business, culture, and sports events - with a connection to Danish society and with a focus on solving global challenges, including climate, green transition, and health.

We attract large international scientific congresses that are aligned with Danish strongholds, business events, and sports and cultural events with great tourism and societal value.

We work in parallel to broaden the value of congresses and events further for the benefit of even more. At the same time, we are responsible for driving regional and national cooperation on business tourism and for strengthening the sustainable transition in Copenhagen’s tourism, which cuts across all the following efforts and Wonderful Copenhagen’s other work.

We do this through:

Attraction and development of international knowledge congresses: The hosting of international scientific congresses creates both high turnover and great value for Danish companies and knowledge environments within the congresses’ professional fields across national borders. It requires broad cooperation and a long-term effort to win the bid to host international scientific congresses. Every year we develop official bids for about 100 international congresses and win about half of the bids. We do this in close collaboration with local hosts, public and private actors, and in close collaboration with the approximately 140 members in the Meetingplace network, see below.

Attraction of international business events: Our business event team works purposefully to attract international business meetings, incentive trips, product launches, and other corporate events. Here, the focus is on sales and marketing towards meeting buyers and other B2B leads in the prioritised markets: the UK, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the USA. The effort includes participation in sales activities, such as fairs, workshops, etc., and showcases the destination to international customers through site inspections and FAM trips in the capital.

Attraction and development of international culture and sports events: Our event team bids on international culture and sports events that have tourism, branding, and popular potential. We do this in close collaboration with the other partners in the bidding process, where Wonderful Copenhagen contributes to the preparation of the official bid, the international relations work, and as a bridge builder between the event and the destination and its actors.

Local cooperation on business tourism and events (Meetingplace): The private actors actively contribute to the cooperation on attracting congresses, business events, and culture and sports events through the Meetingplace network, which gathers 140 member companies.

National cooperation on business tourism (MeetDenmark): The national development company for business and meeting tourism, MeetDenmark, has a secretariat in Wonderful Copenhagen and works side by side with the other efforts for business tourism. MeetDenmark encompasses 11 Danish destinations that work with business tourism. The development company functions as a competence centre that develops and shares new knowledge and concrete tools for destinations and the industry’s companies in order to strengthen the Danish meeting and congress destinations’ international competitiveness, the attraction of international business, the industry’s sustainable transition, and development of business tourism’s broader societal value.

Broader value creation at congresses and events (Legacy): In parallel with attracting congresses and events, we work to maximise the broader value creation in connection with hosting an event. Our legacy team assesses the potential of the individual congresses and events, enters into dialogue with relevant actors, and explores interfaces between the event/congress and its objectives on the one hand and Copenhagen’s and Denmark’s strongholds and objectives on the other. The work is based on a tailormade model, and when potential and goals are defined, the partners who can execute the efforts are mobilised.

The sustainable transition of the capital’s tourism: We have ambitious goals for the sustainable transition of the capital’s tourism, and in IMPACT, we ensure Wonderful Copenhagen’s cross-cutting sustainability effort. The effort is about achieving our ambitious, strategic objectives to strengthen the destination’s international competitiveness and to ensure tourism development that contributes to the realisation of both national and international objectives for the reduction of CO2 emissions.

We do this, among other things, through the development of new business models via company courses, certification efforts, and knowledge sharing. In the effort, we also drive the work to strengthen Copenhagen’s position on the Global Destination Sustainability Index and with Copenhagen’s sustainability manifesto, Planet Copenhagen.