Unimplemented Business-Program
29.02.2016
St. Petersburg is considered the cultural capital by right; business tourism in the city is not developed so strongly as in Moscow, therefore the potential of growth here is rather high.
According to the Strategy of Social & Economic Development of the Northwestern Federal District for the period till 2020, St. Petersburg shall hit the top 10 European and top 20 world congress cities. “However the rate of business tourism development in St. Petersburg is slow. The year 2015 saw negative dynamics. By many indications, such as rented space, the number of international and Russian participants, we see a decline. The analysis of large-scale projects with an exhibition area of over 3000 sq.m shows that the slowdown in space rentals may reach 20%," says Natalia Kireyeva, head of the real estate market research department at the Maris company in association with CBRE.
According to St. Petersburg companies’ estimate, the volume of business meetings market in Russia amounts to 10-15 billion rubles, Moscow companies speak of 20 billion rubles. St. Petersburg's share in the total volume of Russia's congress and exhibition services market constitutes 21-30%; this is roughly the level of the previous year.
Thus, the total capacity of the congress market in St. Petersburg is estimated to be 3-3.5 billion rubles.
The number of tourists who visited St. Petersburg for business events this year totaled, by experts’ estimates, from 70 to 100 thousand people.
In 2014, the "Congress & Exhibition Bureau" state budgetary organization was established in St. Petersburg to attract large-scale congress and exhibition events to the city.
In 2014 and 2015, the number of international events in St. Petersburg did not increase. According to the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA), at year-end 2014 the Northern Capital ranked 79 (31 events, 10,812 delegates), while Russia ranked 42 (76 events). For comparison, in 2014 the neighboring Helsinki hosted more international events than Russia (84).
In 2015, Congress & Exhibition Bureau submitted 15 applications to host international business events in St. Petersburg that were formed together with industry insiders; two applications turned out to be the winning ones.
In 2016, it is planned to increase the number of newsworthy events aimed at expanding the boundaries of the tourist season (the Festival of Lights, the Easter festival).
Eugenia Tuchkova, deputy director of the consulting department at Colliers International, St. Petersburg, believes that so far St.Petersburg suffers a shortage in assembly halls for holding business events with a seating capacity of 700-1000 persons. ExpoForum Congress & Exhibition Center is located in Pulkovo and is designed for holding large-scale international and intercity events for 2000 persons at least, therefore it cannot mitigate the lack of conference centers within the city limits,” she points out.
“As for large constructions where a congress of international level may be held, they are almost absent as such. ExpoForum, that was built not so long ago, is a project which on the whole may be brought into line with large-scale sites in other countries. However, sufficient demand for such sites has not been formed in St. Petersburg yet. Certainly, from the image viewpoint, availability of large congress centers is very important for a city, but from the business viewpoint, St. Petersburg is not yet ready for a large number of projects of such level," concludes Ms. Sharygina.
Opinion:
Timur Nigmatullin, the financial analyst at Finam Group:
– Business tourism greatly depends on economic situation. In the conditions of economic recession, active stimulation of business tourism may not result in a desired effect and the budgetary funds will go down the drain. In St. Petersburg, there are up to 50-60 functioning convention centers of different formats and equipment status, including videoconferencing. In principle, during the last years the city has been definitely experiencing the lack of modern centers. To my mind, St. Petersburg needs some more 5-10 centers of modern format. Nevertheless, with regard to worsening economic situation and general stagnation of business in the last 1.5 years, I do not expect new projects start-up in this domain.
