Bangkok rising: the Thai capital shone as one of the top six global 'Cities to Watch' in GainingEdge's latest report on "Leveraging Intellectual Capital" of convention destinations. Photo Credit: GettyImages/tawanlubfah
Bangkok emerged as one of the top six global 'Cities to Watch' in
GainingEdge's latest annual report on "Leveraging Intellectual Capital"
of convention destinations, based on an analysis of these destinations'
international association leadership.
With local intellectual leaders active in 194 international
association boards, Bangkok ranks 35th in the world and stands out in
Asia Pacific as a city showing strong commitment to conference business
with the highest "harnessing ratio" at 63.4%, followed by Shanghai
51.7%, Singapore 50.8%, Taipei 45.9% and Kuala Lumpur 44.3%.
The
ratio is a report metric assessing how effectively meeting destinations
are leveraging their intellectual capital, i.e. how successfully the
city is engaging local leaders to bid for association meetings and bring
business to their shores. Based on its harnessing ratio, a destination
can understand the available business potential and strategise on how
this could be activated.
GainingEdge’s report presents the list of the world's top 50 cities
in terms of presence of their local leaders in governing bodies of
international associations which organise large conventions.
According to the report, leading the world's top cities list are
Paris with local leaders in 644 international boards (16 more than last
year); Tokyo with 509 (+21); Beijing with 438 (+10) and New York with
530 (56 less than last year).
The destinations that experienced the greatest increase in the
influence of their local leaders on association boards compared to the
previous year are: Sydney with its leaders active in 46 additional
boards, followed by Kuala Lumpur and Singapore (with +34 each), and
Seoul (+28).
In the world's top 50 countries list, Australia and Japan ranked in
the top 10, while China, India and South Korea made it to the top 20
with Singapore closely following, ranked 21st.
“Our research shows London again at the top, followed by Paris,
Tokyo, with Beijing surpassing New York this year, indicating once again
that these cities are true global knowledge hubs with strong influence
in international associations,” Milos Milovanovic, head of GainingEdge
Analysis and Research (GEAR) said.
“These five cities are key global knowledge hubs which concentrate
over 10% of the total available intellectual capital, with 2,756 local
leaders active.”