The Madrid Convention Bureau (MCB) has submitted 55 bids to host meetings taking place between 2011 and 2020. Holding these events in Madrid would bring huge benefits for the city. Apart from making a contribution towards boosting the income generated by tourism, hosting professional meetings always helps to increase employment as well as economic and business activity. In this sense, the four most important congresses out of the fifty or so for which the MCB has submitted a bid would attract between 7,000 and 30,000 people to Madrid, making a total of 69,000 professionals.

International events

Similarly, nearly all the congresses for which the Madrid Convention Bureau has submitted a bid are international events. The MCB is concentrating its efforts on promoting the city's image beyond national borders; this is because, as Spain's capital city, Madrid is where the majority of this country's professional associations are based, and they are already fully aware of the advantages and potential of hosting any kind of event in the city. The bid processes involving the Madrid Convention Bureau come from its own research and fact finding procedures, through conference organising companies linked to the MCB who request support or overall management for a bid submission, or through professional contacts made at trade fairs and other activities promoting Madrid as a tourist destination.

During 2010, the MCB has already identified 275 national and international congresses held in Madrid and has provided direct support for 148 of them. In this same year, Madrid was also chosen as the venue for several major international congresses taking place over the next few years, such as EULAR 2013 (EULAR-European League Against Rheumatism) and MED220 (4th International Congress on Prediabetes and the Metabolic Syndrome) in 2011.

In addition to this work concerning the association market sector, the MCB has at this moment an intense activity in the corporate market that has been translated in the last few days by holding two presentation events of Madrid in China and Central Europe: the MCB went to Shanghai in September 16th with 10 of his associates with the aim of initiating the first contacts with travel managers in a market with great potential for our city. In the second case, three presentations to associations and travel managers of German, Luxembourger and French corporate sector, on 27th, 28th, and 30th of September must serve to consolidate relations with mature markets with capital importance for the city of Madrid.