An encouraging outlook
Since the spring of 2022 we have seen business tourism and professional events coming back to Bordeaux in a big way. The city’s hotels were 80-90% full in June and September last year, traditionally the busiest months for Bordeaux, with a virtually even split between business tourism and other forms of tourism. We are now back to pre-Covid levels of activity, or probably slightly more, since the number of hotel rooms available across the metropolis has risen by 1,500 since 2019.
In terms of large-scale congresses, we have not yet returned to 2019 levels but the gap is getting smaller: 2022 was just 10% down on 2019, despite the fact that we were only really open for business for 9 months of last year. Since September we have also seen an increase in the number of applications for European and international congresses with more than 3,000 participants. That in itself is a very positive indication of things to come over the next few years!
Activity in the corporate sector has bounced back to 2019 levels, and even exceeded them in some respects. Hotels have reported a big increase in residential seminars since August.
The outlook for 2023 is very good, with new corporate events and congresses being confirmed every day. But we do need to be mindful of the risk that organizers will hold back on account of high energy prices. We can adapt!
THE BUSINESS TOURISM OBSERVATORY
The business tourism observatory coordinated by Bordeaux Convention Bureau identified no fewer than 2,500 professional events taking place across the metropolis in 2022, adding up to almost 400,000 congress days. That figure was 20% below the 2019 benchmark, but still represents an impressive post-Covid rebound.
Up until late March 2022 the MICE market was virtually non-existent, but the solid results recorded for the rest of the year indicate that activity in the sector is almost back to normal. This trend is confirmed by the very promising events already scheduled for the first six months of 2023.
