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Bologna Ambassadors Award Ceremony 2023

April 3rd 2023

The fifth edition of Bologna, the City of Events - Bologna Ambassador Awards Ceremony 2023 was held on Monday April 3 2023 at 6 p.m. at the Cappella Farnese in Bologna, where the fourteen personalities who won this year's prestigious award were honored.

The Bologna Ambassador project is aimed at influential personalities from the city's academic, medical, scientific, professional, business and institutional world who are interested in nominating Bologna as a venue for a future conference or other event. Thanks to their prestige and network of national and international relationships, the award-winning personalities can act as spokespeople for the value of the destination and influence decisions in choosing Bologna for major events, thus truly becoming "Ambassadors" and "Ambassadresses" of the area and contributing to improving the visibility of the destination and its scientific, cultural and economic development.

The award is promoted by the City of Bologna, upon the initiative of the Bologna Convention Bureau. In support of the city's Ambassadors, BCB offers free of charge concrete services for the success of the event, such as the preparation of candidacy documentation or the identification of spaces, the selection of the best suppliers, as well as activating and facilitating relations with local institutions and providing organizational, communication, but also economic support both at the candidacy stage and during the event itself.

Contextually with the award ceremony of the Ambassadors, the city's key players dialogued about Bologna's growth as an international destination in the MICE sector. Franco Baraldi, President of Bologna Welcome - Convention & Visitors Bureau, gave the welcome speech, and speakers during the ceremony included Matteo Lepore, Mayor of Bologna, Simona Tondelli, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, Mattia Santori, President of the Territorio Turistico Bologna-Modena, Gianpiero Calzolari, President of BolognaFiere, and Bruna Maccarrone, Chair Conference Committee of the EMDR Europe Association.

Bologna is increasingly an event-friendly city as it enhances and facilitates participation because of its easy national and international accessibility, its authentic characteristics and its vibrant academic community. In recent years, the city has grown a lot in terms of number of international events, and by 2022 it is ranked in the Top40 cities worldwide, at the same level as Beijing and Melbourne and just ahead of Rotterdam, Gothenburg, and Lyon; it is the only noncapital city under half a million inhabitants in the top 40 cities. In Italy, Bologna is on the podium for the first time, in third place, after Rome and Milan.

The destination's growth in the MICE sector fits within the positive trend related to tourism in recent years. Excluding the first three months of 2022, still marked by Covid, last year saw an increase in the number of overnight stays of 3 percent in the Capital and 2 percent at the metropolitan level compared to 2019 levels; between April and December, the hotel occupancy rate also touched 75.9 percent, compared to 69.3 percent in 2019. According to a recent study, in the ranking of Italy's top 500 municipalities for tourism wealth creation analyzed over the first eight months of 2022, the Municipality of Bologna ranks 11th, with tourism wealth of €917,851,631.00: tourism in Bologna has thus increasingly become an important economic factor, with spillovers in terms of employment, new entrepreneurship and wealth created.

The focus of the dialogue between the institutional figures then shifted to Bologna Welcomes Events, the incentive plan for event organizers allocated by the City of Bologna to support the sector, which enhances the destination in international competition, on par with major European cities. The fund is designed to financially facilitate the implementation of major events in the destination for the years 2023-2026. The grant for associations and companies that choose metropolitan Bologna as the venue for the next edition of their event is up to a maximum of 50,000 euros depending on the number of participants and the national or international character of the event. In just three months, 16 events of national and international character have applied, showing how the plan is a concrete stimulus for the destination.

In conclusion, Mattia Santori, Franco Baraldi, Simona Tondelli and Gianpiero Calzolari proceeded to award the fourteen Bologna Ambassadors 2023. Below are the names of those who received this prestigious recognition:

1. Angela Grassi
Administrator ETA Florence Renewable Energy

for 31st European Biomass Conference - EUBCE 2023

2. Bruna Maccarrone
Psychologist and Psychotherapist
Clinical director "EMDR Psychotherapy Center" - Rome
Chair Conference Committee, EMDR Europe Association

for Europe Research & Practice Conference - EMDR 2023

3. Valerio Carelli
Full Professor of Medical Genetics, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna
Director of the Neurogenetics Program, IRCCS Istituto Scienze Neurologiche di Bologna

4. Valeria Tiranti
Senior Biologist, IRCCS Carlo Besta Neurological Institute Foundation - Milan, Italy
Deputy Scientific Director

for International Meeting on Mitochondrial Pathology - EUROMIT 2023

5. Maria Cristina Matteucci
Associate Professor in Developmental and Educational Psychology, Department of Educational Sciences, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna

For 44th annual conference of the International School Psychology Association - ISPA

6. Maurizio Canavari
Full Professor of Rural Economics and Estimation, Department of Agri-food Sciences and Tec-nologies, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna
President of the Association of Doctors in Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences of Bologna
Secretary of the National Academy of Agriculture - University of Bologna

For 14th European Conference on Precision Agriculture - ECPA2023

7. Giovanni Martinelli
Scientific Director, IRCCS Istituto Romagnolo per lo Studio dei Tumori "Dino Amadori"- IRST
Associate Professor in Hematology, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, Institute of Hematology "L. e A. Seragnoli"

for 31st Symposium of the International Association for Comparative Research on Leukemia and Related Diseases - IACRLRD

8. Claudio Cerchione
Medical director researcher, IRCCS Istituto Romagnolo per lo Studio dei Tumori "Dino Amadori" - IRST
Adjunct professor, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna
President Society of Hematologic Oncology Italy
Vice-President IACRLRD

for 31st Symposium of the International Association for Comparative Research on Leukemia and Related Diseases - IACRLRD

9. Antonio Morandi
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna
Member of the Board of the European Society for Applied Superconductivity (ESAS)

10. Marco Breschi
Associate Professor of Electrotechnics, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna
Member of the Board of the European Society for Applied Superconductivity (ESAS)

for 16th European Conference on Applied Superconductivity - EUCAS 2023