观点：Eventex城市排名仅代表奖项积分，非目的地综合实力

What does Eventex actually measure?

Upon a second look at both rankings, a straightforward question arose: can a city be proclaimed the best event destination solely because it earned the most points in an award competition?

Eventex does not rank cities based on their holistic quality for event organising. Au contraire, it ranks them by the number of points accumulated by events, venues, and destinations hosted in the city across three editions of the Eventex Awards. That makes the ranking legitimate, but much narrower than a ranking of the best event destinations.

The methodology is based on the results of the Eventex Awards 2024, 2025 and 2026. For cities, points come from three sources: awarded events, venue category awards, and destination category awards. Each awarded event is counted only once in a given edition, provided it is the winner. If an event took place in several cities, assign points to each host city. A local venue award counts for three points, while a destination award given to a city or a location within a city is worth five points. Points for platinum, golden, silver, and bronze awards from the 2026 edition are worth twice as much as the same awards from 2024 and 2025. The Grand Prix is only taken into account for 2026 and left marked as N/A for the previous two years.

Eventex also notes that a city doesn’t necessarily need an awarded event to gain a spot in the ranking. It only needs points earned through a venue or destination.

For countries, the rationale and evaluation are different. A venue award counts double. A destination award counts for three when received by a city, venue, area, or event within a country, and fivefold when received by the country itself.

Eventex also notes that a city doesn’t necessarily need an awarded event to gain a spot in the ranking. It only needs points earned through a venue or destination. Hence, the index ranks cities not only by the number of awarded events, but by the total points from all three categories.

Et voilà, we have a new ranking

Let’s be frank and accurate. The events industry has not received a ranking of the cities and countries that are objectively the best for organising events.

We received a ranking of the cities and countries that accumulated the most points, according to Eventex. That is not only a semantic difference.

For instance, Eventex cites that Warsaw hosted more award-winning events than any other city in the ranking. Nevertheless, it finished second, trailing behind Abu Dhabi, which, according to Eventex, won more awards in venue categories than any other city. The result therefore reflects both awarded events and differently weighted venue and destination awards, not event count alone.

The methodology has no flaws as long as everyone knows exactly what it measures. That is why better nomenclature would be “Cities with the most points received at the Eventex Awards.”

Would anyone notice such a ranking? Probably not. Would cities excitedly share it across their social media profiles? Highly improbable. Would it be just as useful to include it in promotional brochures, PRs, and bids? Not likely. That is why an index that measures excellence and awards only within the Eventex Awards realm can easily transmute into a ranking of the best cities for events. If we overlook this methodological nitpicking detail, we are left with an attractive message.

Sancta simplicitas

According to Eventex’s logic, the finest restaurant is the one with the most diplomas and awards from culinary competitions hanging on its walls. In their view, food quality, staff professionalism, dinner price, or whether guests even wish to return play no role. All that matters is diplomas.

Make no mistake; the awarded events deserve the highest recognition. The same goes for cities, venues, agencies and clients that created them. Eventex Awards is an established international competition, and being ranked in the index can be an excellent promotional tool. The problem occurs when the success of one award system is used as proof of a destination’s overall quality.

The entire index is based only on entries evaluated in the Eventex Awards that won an award. That is the core difference.

Eventex Index forgot, or deliberately did not measure, air accessibility, hotel capacity, the full range of meeting infrastructure, the expertise of local partners, a destination’s sustainability efforts, security, safety, and price competitiveness. Moreover, it includes no measure of client and attendee satisfaction, evaluation of event legacy, or impact on the local community. Most importantly, it does not cover all events worldwide. The entire index is based only on entries evaluated in the Eventex Awards that won an award. That is the core difference.

The essence of the ranking

Rankings might seem innocent, but they are not. They mould perceptions, direct attention, and, if repeated long and consistently enough, become facts. The more complex a methodology, the fewer people read it. The simpler a message, the easier it is to believe.

Think about it: Abu Dhabi is the best city in the world for events. Most readers will understand it that way. In reality, the index paints a much more compact snapshot. According to Eventex’s methodology, Abu Dhabi accumulated the most points based on results across three Eventex Awards editions, not the broadest claim about overall destination quality.

The distinction is so vast it almost resembles the difference between an award and the truth.

What can ICCA teach us?

Do you remember the echo across the industry when we began transparently and critically writing about the ICCA ranking? ICCA’s index, likewise, does not measure the holistic quality of event destinations. It ranks them based on international association events in ICCA’s database that meet three prerequisites: regular occurrence, rotation among at least three countries, and at least 50 attendees.

ICCA does not hide this fact. The association warned that its statistics cover only a segment of the events industry and shouldn’t be understood as a holistic ranking of event and meeting destinations.

This transparency has helped the ICCA rankings remain credible and relevant. Not because they measure everything, but because they state what they measure and what they don’t.

The responsibility of those behind the rankings

Every ranking has a right to exist. Yet no ranking has the right to pretend it is something it evidently is not. Rankings often become handy shortcuts for selling. A bit of generic information, an award, an eye-catching graphic, and we have the best city in the world. However, a serious comparison of destinations is not created overnight, and less so by pressing a button.

I am perhaps too well aware of how much onerous work goes into compiling a credible benchmark for event destinations. We have been developing our Meeting Experience Index for the past nineteen years. We double-check data from several sources and compare it across destinations, while publicly explaining the rankings and our evaluation approach. We do this not because our methodology is an end in itself, but because our rankings influence destinations’ appeal and event organisers’ business decisions. Since we first published the results, we haven’t received a single constructive complaint. That is no coincidence, but a logical consequence of serious, hard work.

In a time of universal deterioration of human values, it often seems that anyone can publish anything online, add the word index next to it, and proclaim the results as the sole truth. But a serious industry needs serious rankings. Otherwise, clients, partners, and the international public will never see us as serious.

We must tread particularly carefully when we hand out awards and recognition based on rankings. That is when methodology goes beyond a technical detail and becomes a credibility question for the entire industry.

Zero bull*hit

Artificial intelligence can help us collate, review and analyse data. What it cannot do, though, is salvage a poor methodology or replace common sense. The rule remains the same: garbage in, garbage out.

When publishing and creating rankings, it’s time to apply our in-house policy more consistently: ZERO BULL*HIT.

To all who publish rankings: use less grandiose language, be more transparent, stop using marketing shortcuts, and provide more provable facts.

Sources:
Eventex Top 50 Cities 2026 – the official ranking and methodology for cities.
Eventex Top 50 Countries 2026 – the official ranking and methodology for countries.
The cities and countries shaping the global events map – Eventex’s explanation of results and examples of Warsaw and Abu Dhabi.
ICCA – 7 Ways NOT to Use the ICCA Rankings in Your Promotional Activities*

*At the time of writing, the article was no longer accessible on ICCA’s website.