Make a local impact
Let us help reduce your footprint
No matter the sector, meetings and conventions often choose Amsterdam for its strong embrace of sustainability. Besides its sustainable venues and catering options, delegates here can also take advantage of the city’s sustainable infrastructure and transportation – regardless of whether sustainability is an explicit factor of their event’s themes.
This is exactly what we made possible at European Society of Cardiology Congress 2023. We worked with local partners RAI Amsterdam, Yellow Bike Rentals and various hotels to pilot a bike rental initiative for visitors to the Congress. This helped promote healthy circulation both within the city and for our visiting delegates. With many delegates already having arrived via chartered, high-speed trains, they were able to greatly reduce their travel-related emissions. Mobilising Amsterdam’s highly connected, low-carbon infrastructure is just one way we can reduce your environmental impact. How else can we help you reduce the footprint of your event?
Broaden the reach of your event's mission
Sustainable initiatives are worthwhile for any meeting, but especially when sustainability is a key factor of the event itself. That was the case for Plant Forward, who returned to Amsterdam for a second edition in 2024. This time, we helped them spread the reach and impact of their expertise in the plant-based food revolution – including to Amsterdammers.
Plant FWD Week was an initiative running for a full week around this two-day conference, in which partnering restaurants served plant-based dishes. These were prepared by over 50 partnering businesses at 70 locations – uniquely suiting the meeting’s delegates and demonstrating to locals how plant-based ingredients can be transformed into exquisite meals. This popular collaboration connected Plant FWD with like-minded food visionaries in Amsterdam and shared that vision widely among locals. But the possibilities are endless: what simple concept could we use to help upgrade the reach of your meeting?
Share your knowledge with Amsterdammers
There are many ways our initiatives can help a meeting or conference make an impact, but the cases we’re particularly proud of tap into the unique innovations and knowledge of a specific event. For the 40th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in 2024, we were able not only to help facilitate this platform for groundbreaking research – but also to help share that knowledge with local citizens.
That’s why we helped organise a public event hosted by Science & Cocktails at Paradiso. This publicly accessible evening collaborated with local experts in cutting-edge reproductive research to help raise local awareness about reproductive health, as well as ESHRE’s global authority in that field. It shone a light on much-needed advances in fertility, in the form of an entertaining, enjoyable cultural programme. In this way, it showed how impactful gatherings here can harness Amsterdam’s own contributions to progress – while also sharing that learning in a way that benefits Amsterdammers. How can we use local expertise to bring your event’s knowledge to a wider public?
Tailor local initiatives to your event’s aims
As we continue to support impactful meetings in our city, the Amsterdam Convention Bureau's mission is to provide added value to events through local impact initiatives. At the 50th World Congress of the International Association for the Study of Pain in 2024, we took this offering to the next level.
Like with ESHRE 2024, ACB's aim is to help share cutting-edge insights with the local public. So, to bring out the best of IASP's research, we worked together with them to develop an entire series of public events – with diverse activities, venues and audiences. We partnered with Pijn Alliantie in Nederland (PA!N) to launch the PA!N IMPACT 2024 programme: several free activities for local residents, including a movement workshop, an interactive experiment at science museum NEMO, a pain-themed art tour at the Rijksmuseum and even a comedy show. It was a perfect demonstration of the value of sharing impact: connecting delegates and their research to their host city, with clear and lasting benefits to locals.
