New Business Unit Strengthens Business Events in Bogota

The Greater Bogota Convention Bureau becomes a new business unit at Invest in Bogota to consolidate the promotion and positioning of Bogota and its region as a city for international events and as a tourism destination.

With public and private support, this new business unit will strengthen the strategy for promoting and positioning Bogota as a worldwide destination for international events. This will keep supporting the economic reactivation and will result in more business opportunities for the industry.

Invest in Bogota (IIB) announces the creation of its new business unit to attract events in the city. The decision was taken after the dissolution of the Greater Bogota Convention Bureau (GBCB) and represented for the capital and the region the possibility of strengthening the investment and events attraction strategy in a single entity.

This unit will be called the Bogota Convention Bureau. It will start its operation in November of this year, achieving a transition process that favours the continuity of the activities that this entity has been developing since its creation.

The decision of creating this new business unit had as reference Pro Colombia’s figure, which integrates the promotion for international tourism, the foreign investment, and the non-traditional exports in Colombia in one entity.

As an international reference, they had Invest in Dubai, and nationally Pro Barranquilla and Invest in Santa Marta.

Mauricio Romero, the Acting Executive Director of Invest in Bogota:

“The integration of the Bureau to Invest in Bogota will allow the city to have a much more cohesive strategy of to position itself as a business city, by having the investment promotion, entrepreneurship, and events in one entity.

Likewise, Juan Carlos González, Vice President of Competitiveness of the Bogota Chamber of Commerce (CCB), states:

“On behalf of the CCB and its Cluster of Business Tourism and Events initiative, we will continue supporting the articulation of the meetings industry’s stakeholders under this new scheme and encouraging the events attraction strategy for the city and its region.”

The new scheme also contemplates the creation of a Sectorial Committee in Invest in Bogota in articulation with the Business Tourism and Events Cluster of the Chamber of Commerce, which will function as a consultative space for entrepreneurs in the meetings industry.

The Bogota Tourism office (IDT) Director, Karol Fajardo Mariño comments:

“The Convention Bureau’s work through so many years will be strengthened with the administration at Invest in Bogota, allowing to continue with the public-private efforts to attract events and meetings in the city, and complement the consolidation of the Colombian capital’s offer and promotion as a business event destination, which is what we do.”

The resources, sustainability, and mission of the new business unit within Invest in Bogota will have the CCB’s and the District’s support as main partners of IIB. It will also strengthen the roles of each entity (IIB, CCB, and IDT) in a complementary and coordinated way.

The strategy represents an opportunity to boost the city’s events attraction, its international positioning and, therefore, the increasing business opportunities for the meetings and events industry.

The Greater Bogota Convention Bureau is a private, non-profit corporation. It was born on March 23, 2004, in Bogota in response to the demands of global markets on the need to have an internationally endorsed institution to search for new events for the destination.

It is currently the institution of Bogota that exercises the commercial representation of the city for this industry. It represents more than 100 companies in the events industry and coordinates with the Bogota Chamber of Commerce.

With the different public actors in the city, such as the District Economic Development Secretariat and the District Tourism Institute, they are aligning the promotion strategies of the events industry to the interests of the city.