全球超80国发布AI战略，会议目的地布局滞后或影响2035年办会选址

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Over 80 countries have adopted national AI strategies, while meeting destinations have developed very few. That gap may decide which locations host major global congresses by 2035.

Canada led the way by publishing the world’s first national AI strategy in March 2017, setting a model for other countries. From January 2017 to June 2025, over 80 countries have released formal national AI strategies, according to the World Bank. Stanford University’s AI Index reports that most new strategies now originate from emerging economies rather than technology leaders. The OECD AI Policy Observatory, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, serves as a central registry and tracks hundreds of policy initiatives from more than 60 countries and the EU.

When reviewed sequentially, these strategies reveal a consistent structure: research and innovation, compute and data infrastructure, skills, AI in the public sector, targeted sector initiatives, and a section on ethics, trust, and regulation. What differs is the emphasis and who the document is really addressing.

Four temperaments

• European Union In April last year, the EU adopted its AI Continental Action Plan, focusing on five areas: infrastructure, data, adoption in strategic sectors, skills, and streamlining the application of existing rules. Rather than introducing new legislation, the plan aims to ensure effective implementation of current regulations.
• United States  The US took a different approach. Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan, released in July 2025, consolidates over 90 federal policy actions under three pillars: innovation, infrastructure, and international diplomacy and security, with deregulation as a key instrument.
• China In August 2025, the country published its State Council AI Plus guideline, establishing a roadmap to integrate artificial intelligence across nearly all sectors of society. Rather than focusing solely on consumer tools, the initiative targets AI as baseline infrastructure for industrial production, scientific research, and public governance – aiming for 90 per cent sector adoption by 2030 and full transformation into an intelligent economy and society by 2035.
• Global AI Destinations Several nations are positioning themselves directly as AI destinations or global AI hubs through dedicated state strategies. The UAE’s National AI Strategy 2031 explicitly targets becoming a primary ‘AI destination,’ Saudi Arabia is driving a centralised national agenda through its AI Authority, and Singapore’s NAIS 2.0 incorporates dedicated “placemaking” systems to attract global talent. Other key regions are building public foundations, such as India’s €1.3 billion AI Mission to provide shared public compute infrastructure, and the African Union’s development-driven and Africa-centric 2024 Continental AI Strategy, anchored in Agenda 2063.

Zooming in on meeting destinations reveals several challenges. Here, the picture turns uncomfortable. The OECD has identified key tourism policy issues, including data protection, consumer protection, labour-market effects, and destination governance – all of which remain largely unaddressed.

The hardest number comes from the European Travel Commission, which in July 2025 had international consulting and research company Kairos Future survey 29 of its 36 member organisations. Not a single national tourism organisation studied had a formal AI strategy or an AI vision in place as of April 2025.

Furthermore, only 14 per cent of the organisations had an AI policy, despite all associations using AI weekly, with some research teams reporting up to 80 per cent time savings as a result. The main barrier for research departments was the lack of a clear roadmap, while marketing departments cited budget constraints. Training was the most requested solution. Additionally, no less than 82 per cent of research teams and 64 per cent of marketing teams were still working to understand the EU AI Act.

A similar trend appears in destination marketing. Sojern, a digital marketing and advertising platform built specifically for the travel and hospitality industry, reported that 63 per cent of Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) used AI for content creation. Still, only 28 per cent applied it to data analysis. In a follow-up, 93 per cent expressed concern or were preparing for changes in how travellers discover and compare destinations through AI services. Currently, AI appears to be used mainly for visible outputs rather than strategic decision-making.

The comparison: five approaches among meeting destinations.

• Singapore demonstrates a fully operational strategy In July 2025, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) signed a memorandum of understanding with OpenAI, the first such agreement for a national tourism organisation in Asia. It aligned with STB’s Tourism 2040 roadmap. The organisation’s Chief Technology Officer, Jordan Tan, says AI is essential to address productivity challenges and drive digital transformation. STB and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) developed a sector-specific Industry Digital Plan for the business events industry, along with an AI Playbook for Tourism, to support this strategy. In Singapore, national strategy and daily operations in the meetings industry are closely integrated.
• Germany takes an infrastructure-focused approach The German Convention Bureau operates Open Data MICE Germany together with the German National Tourist Board (GNTB), enabling destinations to structure their business events data in an open, machine-readable format. In October 2025, this initiative was integrated with Destinator, an AI-powered destination research platform from the PCMA, the world’s largest network and community for business events strategists and planners, and dFakto, a Data Infrastructure and AI Platform, allowing German data to support a global research tool. Rather than relying on a traditional strategy document, Germany’s approach is demonstrated through its data structure. Destinations that are machine-readable become selectable.
• The Gulf positions the destination itself as the AI proposition Dubai advances the federal strategy by establishing institutions such as the Dubai AI Campus in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the region’s largest dedicated hub for AI companies, and the Dubai AI Academy, which aims to train 10,000 leaders. For congress organisers in AI, robotics, or fintech, this provides a compelling content proposition rather than a purely technological offering.
• Venues prioritise efficiency over positioning Sven Bossu, CEO of the International Association of Convention Centres (AIPC), notes that given the current challenging economic conditions, convention centres tend to focus technology investments too narrowly on efficiency improvements rather than strategic positioning. The central theme of the AIPC Annual Conference 2026 reinforces his critique: true leadership requires moving beyond defensive cost-saving to instead use tech to build future market value, while defining success not solely by budget size, but by the ability to turn challenges into strategic opportunities.
• The exhibition industry – adoption without architecture According to UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry, the Global Exhibition Barometer study reports that 87 per cent of companies now use AI, up four percentage points in six months. However, 68 per cent still rely on standard tools, only 15 per cent have integrated AI into existing systems, and no more than four per cent use proprietary algorithms trained on internal data. Depending on the application, between 57 and 79 per cent of companies are still researching or testing AI solutions. These results indicate broad adoption with limited underlying infrastructure.

The comparison leads to a clear conclusion. Countries develop strategies, while meeting destinations purchase tools. Singapore and Germany are exceptions, having built a bridge between national policy and the industry’s daily data reality.

Looking five to ten years ahead, what do forecasters say? While no futurist addresses AI strategies for congress destinations directly, several describe the forces that will shape these strategies between 2031 and 2036.

The sovereignty track is the clearest. The World Economic Forum (WEF) and Bain & Company, a global management consulting firm and WEF’s strategic partner, report on this. They expect annual investment in AI applications to reach €1.34 trillion by 2030, noting that the US and China already account for about 65 per cent of all capital invested across the value chain. They conclude that most economies are better served by becoming ecosystem builders, scaling what they can master and partnering for the rest, rather than seeking control of the entire chain. McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, projects similar figures: €1.16 trillion in global AI spending by 2030, reporting that 71 per cent of surveyed executives, investors, and government officials consider sovereign AI an existential concern or strategic imperative.

However, forecasts provide a more measured perspective. Forrester’s Global Sovereignty Forecast for 2025–2030, published in July 2026, assesses 14 countries across nine dimensions and concludes that no nation is on a realistic path to full technological independence. Twelve of the assessed economies average 39 per cent sovereignty in 2025 and are projected to reach 40 per cent in 2030, a one percentage point increase in five years. China leads at 82 per cent, followed by the US at 79 per cent. Dario Maisto, Principal Analyst and Global Head of Digital and Cloud Sovereignty at Forrester, warns that selecting an AI model may signal political alignment. For destinations seeking to host congresses, this raises practical concerns about data location and jurisdiction, which are expected to become more prominent over the next decade.

Convergence changes what a meeting is. Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Strategy Group, introduced the concept of Living Intelligence at SXSW 2025: AI integrated with sensors, robotics, and biology in systems that continuously learn and evolve. She expects humanoid robots to be widely adopted around 2030 and identifies cities and universities as living laboratories where technology is tested at scale. This outlines the next-generation destination proposition: cities that serve as test environments will attract congresses.

A humanist perspective is also emerging. The German futurist Gerd Leonhard, whose 2030 outlook envisions an AI agent independently assembling a trip to Santorini, Greece, argues against replacement: the goal should be intelligent assistants and AI tools that leave decisions to humans. “We’re not going to build a smart economy by getting rid of people,” he states, calling for a technocratic oath focused on human flourishing. For the business events industry, this is both reassuring and challenging. If the agent manages research, planning, and matchmaking, the value of physical meetings must extend beyond information transfer.

What the industry should include in its own documents Three points follow from the material:

First AI strategy for a meetings destination is primarily a data issue, not a tools issue. Germany’s open, machine-readable business events data is an investment that delivers value when the buyer is an agent, not a person.

Second the upward connection is missing. While most countries now have a national AI strategy with budget, compute, and skills programmes, almost no convention bureau has yet included itself in these strategies. This is an opportunity to address.

Third sovereignty is now a competitive factor. With 71 per cent of decision-makers considering sovereign AI existential and forecasts indicating dependency will persist for at least a decade, clear answers on data residency, jurisdiction, and model choice are now central to the bid process, not secondary.

Remember: The world’s first national AI strategy was introduced in March 2017. Over nine years later, the business events industry has yet to follow suit and join the race.

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