Building Connections and Insight: Our Retrospective on IBTM World 2025

From 18 to 20 November, the This is Athens Convention & Visitors Bureau team was present in Barcelona, Spain, for IBTM World 2025. As  a major global event for the meetings, incentives, conferences, and events industry, our participation was driven by practical objectives: to increase the visibility of the Athens brand, to generate new leads for the city’s conference sector, and reinforce engagment with partners.

Commercial Activity and Networking

Exhibiting within the Greek National Tourism Organisation pavilion (Stand E40), our team conducted a steady series of meetings, hosting over 70 appointments which included both pre-scheduled sessions and walk-ins. The interest shown in Athens as a destination was encouraging, yielding a significant number of relevant enquiries. . In particular, we secured key meetings with representatives from major international associations, a priority segment for our bureau.

Beyond the exhibition floor, our engagement extended to networking events. We maintained a consistent presence at the exclusive cocktails organised by IAPCO and ICCA, engaging with senior executives and decision-makers. Furthermore, our participation in the ICCA Mediterranean Chapter dinner provided an excellent opportunity for the exchange of views and best practices with our regional peers.Last but not least we also met with our valuable partners Greek Link, Narratologies, AFEA Congress and Convin S.A. and the peer Thessaloniki Convention Bureau.

Knowledge Exchange and Educational Sessions

A core component of our attendance at IBTM World is keeping abreast of global industry trends. This year, our team attended select sessions from the educational programme that offered valuable perspectives into experience design and destination marketing.

The session "The most expensive selfie wall you’ll never build again" challenged the reliance on visual features like "instagrammable" moments. For a historic destination like Athens, the key takeaway was the importance of designing authentic, immersive experiences that offer measurable outcomes, rather than just aesthetic value. On the other hand, the talk "It’s my bleisure: turning research into destination marketing campaign" offered us meaningful insights, since Athens is a prime destination for combining business with leisure, presented data-driven methodologies for converting research into effective marketing campaigns, ensuring we target the 'bleisure' segment with precision.

Last but not least, examining the case study of Berlin's festival-style MICE event during the session "How BESTIVAL reinvents Berlin’s MICE Experiences" offered a look at alternative event formats and the "Creating Smarter Events: What's next for 2026" gave insights regarding ongoing trends and developments. Understanding how other major European capitals are reinventing their B2B engagement strategies provides us with benchmarks for our own future initiatives.

Beyond the educational sessions, we initiated a series of strategic discussions with peer Convention Bureaus exchanging knowledge and best practices focused on  data management. Our focus was on identifying efficient methodologies for maintaining up-to-date databases and understanding how this data is practically applied to shape strategy and decision-making. 

These discussions are particularly timely as we lay the groundwork for the phased implementation of the Sustainable Tourism Observatory in 2026. As we move towards a data-informed approach, our goal is to build a structured , comprehensive profile of the destination. We aim to use data not only for reporting but also for informing communication with stakeholders on relevant destination topics. 

Our participation in IBTM World 2025 has not only expanded our network of contacts but also equipped us with actionable insights to further elevate Athens' standing in the global meeting industry

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