Meeting Legacies: Innovating for Enhanced Value Creation

Since 2018, GainingEdge has led two major projects for MeetDenmark on meeting legacies. The purpose has been to identify how Danish destinations can create significant added value for visiting congresses while also increasing the value for Danish society beyond the traditional economic benefits. 

Today, MeetDenmark has released the 2nd study, completed in 2020, which explores the processes, mechanisms and tools which will help both associations and destinations to create greater meeting legacies. From developing a global legacy nomenclature to strategic legacy planning and legacy mobilisation, the report builds on the first study to provide destinations with a guiding framework to help prioritise, plan and enhance their meeting legacies. 

The legacy tools presented in the study are based on previous experiences as well as insight gained from four new case studies held in Denmark in 2019. The case congress were: IoT Forum’s IoT Week (Aarhus), Media Arts History’s RE:Sound congress (Aalborg), 100% Climate Neutrality (Soenderborg) which originates from a collaboration of universities, municipalities and innovation actors in the Danish/German border region and WindEurope’s Offshore 2019 (Copenhagen), which is the world’s largest offshore wind energy congress. 

While Covid-19 has challenged the global meeting industry, MeetDenmark believes that having clear legacy goals when planning a congress is more important than ever.