Birmingham will launch a new campaign to promote itself as a first choice destination for meetings, conferences and events at international trade show IMEX, held in Frankfurt, Germany on 22-24 April.

Birmingham Convention Bureau (BCB) will be exhibiting at the show to represent Birmingham and the wider region and will unveil its new campaign for the first time in Frankfurt.

With a strong emphasis on experiential marketing, the campaign has been developed to build on the success that the city has enjoyed in the last 12 months, having secured three major political party conferences, the Rotary International Convention in its centenary year in 2009 and the Olympic trials in June to name a few.

This success has been achieved through a partnership approach between BCB, venues, service providers and other organisations throughout the West Midlands. Partnership is a key theme of the new campaign and to illustrate this BCB will be joined at IMEX by Coventry and South Warwickshire CSW, The IEC at Ricoh Arena and The International Convention Centre (ICC), in order to showcase the best of what the region has to offer to events organisers.

Ian Taylor, commercial director at Marketing Birmingham, which operates BCB, said: “We are very excited about the launch of our new campaign and are unveiling it at IMEX to demonstrate our international outlook.

“Birmingham is very much in the spotlight at the moment, with major events and organisations coming to the city and attracting a high media profile. International associations, political party conferences, major corporations, sporting events and consumer shows – everyone’s coming to Birmingham. Business tourism has long been an anchor of Birmingham’s economy and we will continue to work with key partners to grow the sector further and ensure that major events keep coming back to the city.”

The events industry in the West Midlands is now worth an estimated £6.5 billion to the regional economy, an increase of £3 million from the previous 12 months, and employs almost 100,000 people.