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municipal area is covered by
green spaces, water and
woods, he says. And Hamburg
is getting an absolutely
amazing new landmark with
the spectacular Elbphilharmonie
concert hall atop an
old quay warehouse. “EUR
420 million has been spent
on upgrading the exhibition
centre, extending the Congress
Center Hamburg
(CCH) and building a 7,000
square-metre exhibition hall
onto it.” And “within walking
distance” of the congress
centre and the fairground
there are sufficient
hotels of all categories, visitors
can alight directly from
the high-speed ICE train and
Hamburg has a downtown
airport,” Rieger adds to the
list (interview p. 44).
In tourist terms the city has
therefore been extremely
successful for some time
now. Between 2001 and
2007 the number of roomnights
soared by almost 56
percent, more than in any
other metropolis and federal
state in Germany. Even in
1/2010
The cruise boom guaranteed
a successful season.
2009 overnights were up another
5.5 percent from January
to September, while
practically all other cities
registered downturns. The
number of bookings in Paris,
Madrid and Vienna, for instance,
dropped by around 6
percent each. “The good
flight connections, especially
with budget airlines,
played a key part in this,” is
the analysis from Dietrich
von Albedyll, managing director
of Hamburg Tourismus
GmbH.
In the business travel segment,
where one-third of
corporate and fully twothirds
of association trips
are linked to congresses,
conferences and events,
the Convention Bureau is
now closing the gap that
many meeting planners perceived
as a downside to
Hamburg. At the same time
the exhibition centre and
Congress Centrum Hamburg
(CCH) have been extended.
“Extension work to
the CCH was urgently necessary,
though,” its chief executive
claims. “It has put
HAMBURG
us in a position to bid for
top-notch congresses that
we wouldn’t previously
have been able to cope with
in terms of their size,” Edgar
Hirt states. “Without the extension
we’d not have won
the European Photovoltaic
Solar Energy Conference
and Exhibition, and we’d
probably have lost the DIVI
Redeveloped
Radisson Hotel
German Interdisciplinary
Association of Critical Care
Medicine congress.”
276 national and international
conferences and congresses
plus cultural and
gastronomic events drawing
almost 336,500 participants
were held last year in
the CCH. This generated
revenues of roughly EUR 9
million, 20 percent more