Business travellers are welcomed over traditional tourism by Visit Flanders

The team at Visit Flanders are setting their sights on the meetings industry after conducting a study revealing that business travellers are more valuable than traditional tourism. To tackle the growing number of conferences in the Belgian region, Visit Flanders have brought in a new events and hotel specialist to help meet demands.

The new expert will help the team attract a massive 300 conferences by 2021, twice as many as their current draw as they look to promote Flanders and Brussels as an international conference destination. Association experts will be highly valued when it comes to identifying and approach the right contacts within associations. They will help find the right match between associations’ demands and the conference venues on offer within Flanders.

Milo Vergucht has joined the Visit Flanders Convention Bureau as International Association Expert, making him the third association expert following the partnership with Gemmeke de Jongh and Tuya Beyers in April. He has previously worked as Managing Director of the local convention bureau Ghent Congress.

In recent years, he played an important role within the world’s largest professional conference organiser, MCI, and mostly worked with associations and corporations active in the medical and pharmaceutical field. Milo is expected to focus on bringing those conferences to Flanders that are high-ranking within the key industries of life sciences and healthcare.

International association conferences offer Flanders the largest growth potential as a MICE destination. With historic venues within city centres offering a unique opportunity for attendees and travellers to experience anything from gala dinners, teambuilding events and private tours to even some retail therapy, all within walking distance.

Flanders owes its strategic added value as a meeting and conference destination to its reputation and expertise in several key industries. These industries are highly developed, with specialised know-how at hand, in one or more Flemish cities and regions: for example, the petrochemical industry in Antwerp, biotechnology in Ghent, nanotechnology in Leuven and healthcare in Bruges, along with the large number of industry headquarters in Brussels itself.

Interested in hosting an event in Flanders? Read our review of the Antwerp, the diamond capital