Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna conference facilities, comparative analysis

The aim of this study is to give an overview of conference facilities in three capital cities in the Central European area, along the Danube, analyse and compare their possibilities and venues. The utilized data within the study was collected from different sources, like websites of the Hungarian, Slovakian and Austrian Convention Bureaus, books dealing with convention and event management and statistics, ICCA publications. Budapest is highly ranked between cities transacting conferences for years. There are 146 different conference facilities with a total capacity for 114.000 participants. The 7 conference centres and all four- and five-star hotels suit all requirements of the different professional organizations. Budapest hosted many megaconferences; out of these the ASTA yearly session and the vein-surgery conference can be excelled. From the conference capacity of Budapest only one conference facility is missing which could host more than 5.000 participants. After analysing the conference capacities of the three Danube-band capitals – Budapest, Vienna, Bratislava, – it can be seen what kind of similarities and differences are characterizing the cities. At the end of this study the writer makes recommendations for the place of the mega-conference centre, the development of a modern and up-to-date conference database, as well as for the cooperation of the three capitals in connection with managing mega-conferences.