City hosts around 90,000 events every year

By John Rumsey, Financial Times Published: 00:00 November 25, 2009 
Sao Paulo: Chaotic, sprawling and vast, Sao Paulo is hardly up there with Honolulu or Paris as a must-see city for convention-goers. Yet, it has become a leading destination for events in the Americas.Increasingly, it is capitalising on the influx of visitors to enhance its cultural offerings and tempt people to stay a little longer and spend a little more.

It is hard not to underestimate the scale of Sao Paulo. The city has an economy the size of Hungary or New Zealand, notes Caio Luiz de Carvalho, president of SPTuris, the city's tourism promotion agency. Each year, this city of nearly 20 million plays host to 90,000 events and the number is growing fast. Last year proved to be a bonanza, with 1,214 new events, an increase of almost 45 per cent over the year before, attracting 12 million visitors.

This year, receipts from events and tourism should be up seven per cent, says de Carvalho. In November alone, Sao Paulo was slated to host an International Film Festival, the 8th Sao Paulo International Architecture Biennial, the 3rd Ibero-American Psychogeriatric conference, Brazil Design Week and the 3rd world congress on Sleep Medicine. The city boasts 42,000 rooms, with the plan to boost that to 50,000 by 2014 in time for the World Cup, notes de Carvalho, who is fond of making comparisons with the city's arch-rival, New York City.

Source : Gulf News - 25/11/2009