The Palais des congrès de Montréal and the Ottawa Convention Centre took the runner-up spots in the International Association of Convention Centres’ (AIPC) Apex Award competition for the world’s best congress centre. In addition, the Centre des congrès de Québec made the top 15 finalists list.
“Our runner-ups are also deserving of real recognition, given the very high standards required to compete in this program and the fact that they each achieved this distinction by being top-ranked in a specific category of evalution,” said Geoff Donaghy, president of the AIPC. “Overall, we feel the AIPC Apex Award goes far beyond simply the winners as it creates important information and insights that drive overall centre performance.”
The AIPC Apex Award is based on an extensive analysis of customer input via detailed surveys and reflects an unbiased picture of a centre’s performance as seen through the eyes of its customers. Criteria includes: facilities, project management, customer relations, catering, creativity and technology. The winner, announced at the recent AIPC conference in Berlin, Germany, was Australia’s Cairns Convention Centre.
“The Apex Award evaluation process is an extensive one that is able to identify the distinctions that separate even the highest performing centres,” said Donaghy. “With almost 1,000 client assessments this year, we have also been able to clearly distinguish the factors that are generally most important to clients in their determination of centre performance, which gives our members and additional insight to drive performance.”
The 15 finalists for 2014 were:
- Adelaide Convention Centre
- Congress Center Basel
- Belfast Waterfront
- Bregenzer Festspiel – und Kongresshaus Gmbh
- Cairns Convention Centre
- Cape Town International Convention Centre
- The Convention Centre Dublin
- Durban International Convention Center
- Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre
- Kyoto International Conference Centre
- Palais des congrès de Montréal
- Nantes International Convention Centre
- Ottawa Convention Centre
- Centre des congrès de Québec
- Uppsala Konsert & Congress AB
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