Edinburgh has been given a bumper £48 million Christmas bonus from the business tourism industry, Edinburgh Convention Bureau (ECB) announced yesterday.

With three new conferences selecting the capital city as their host destination, the total value business tourism won for the city so far this year has been boosted to £48.1 million.

The anticipated revenue from conferences could top £50 million by the end of December, the ECB claims.

The three new events will bring up to 870 high spending delegates to the city between July 2008 and October 2010, injecting £1.09 million into the economy.

The members of the Commonwealth Hansard Editors Association, who record the procedures of Parliaments, will be the first to arrive in July next year. A month later the Federation of European Microbiological Societies will hold its Council meeting in Edinburgh. The International Association of Dental Traumatology will hold its event in the city during October 2010.

The ECB set a target to attract conferences worth £71.7 million to the local economy for its operating year, which ends in April 2008, a 5% increase over last year’s £68.5 million.

The £48.1 million achieved as at end of November involves 40,880 delegates from around the world spending an average of £364 a day on accommodation, meals, local travel, gifts and shopping during their stay.

“We end the year on a positive note on target to achieve our objective of attracting more business tourism to the city,” said Sue Stuart, chief executive of the ECB. “Everyone at ECB is looking forward to meeting the challenges of the New Year.”