As one of the world's major financial hubs and the destination of more than seven million business travelers per year, London is no stranger to the international meetings industry.

According to Visit London, the British capital has a total of 100,000 existing hotel rooms–more than 40,000 of which are four- and five-star–that run at an 85 percent occupancy. The city will also be beefing up its accommodation options with more than 20,000 additional rooms available, in anticipation of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.

In 2005, London won the bid for the 2012 Games, beating out Paris, Moscow, Madrid and New York. The focus of the event will be the Olympic Park in East London, where much new development is already taking place.

More than 20 new hotels will be built over the next four years. The £180 million ($335 million), 605-bedroom Sofitel London Heathrow opened at Heathrow Airport's new Terminal 5 at the end of June, and construction has begun on the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge with 1,037 hotel apartments, scheduled to open in 2010. Other luxury brands such as Hilton, Marriott, and Novotel will also be opening new properties.

With a budget of £9.3 billion ($17.4 billion), the Olympics also mean major spending on infrastructure development. The estimated cost of the Olympic Village alone is £1 billion ($1.87 billion). Construction of the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium began in May, and other venues to be built include a cycling velodrome as well as fencing, hockey, handball, and basketball arenas.

In addition to investments directly related to the Olympics, the British government launched a five-year, £10 billion ($18.7 billion) overhaul of London's public transportation system in 2005. Plans for the transit network–currently used by more than 10 million passengers per day–include the construction of the Thames Gateway Bridge in East London; rail extension and capacity increases; train, track, and signal upgrades; and the modernization of 200 underground stations.  

Air Space
London is not just gaining momentum on the ground. British airspace is already one of the busiest in the world, with five major airports–Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City–transporting a total of nearly 140 million people each year. Heathrow alone boasts 67 million travelers per annum, the highest volume of international traffic at any airport in the world.

The March opening of the new Terminal 5, used solely by British Airways, boosted  Heathrow's capacity to an estimated 90 million passengers per year. The British Aviation Authority plans to demolish Terminals 1 and 2 and replace them with a new one, Heathrow East, while Terminals 3 and 4 will undergo extensive redevelopment over the next 10 years.

London City, the smallest of London's airports with three million passengers per year, is also establishing itself as a leading business airport. Its proximity to the Olympic Park, just two miles away, makes it a convenient choice for business travelers (currently, two-thirds of all passengers are traveling on business). Eleven airlines currently serve 33 destinations across the UK and Europe, but the airport will soon open up to trans-Atlantic traffic as well. Earlier this year, British Airways announced the launch of twice daily business-class-only flights from London City Airport to New York in 2009.

Meet & Greet
The meetings and conference industries are likely to benefit from the upsurge in accommodation and infrastructure development.

"It has triggered a number of enquiries who want to link the vision [and] values of the Olympics to their own event," says Becky Graveney, associations sales manager at Visit London.

Examples are the 3rd World Congress of Cultural Psychiatry in March 2012 and the 2012 World Congress of Hotel Concierges, with 600 delegates from 38 different countries, who will visit the Olympic site as part of their program.  
Existing venues also welcome the Games. "The Olympics are going to…help with developing the east parts of London and enhance business opportunities at all levels of the industry, not only hospitality," says Kostas Ioannidis, director of sales at the Hilton London Metropole. 

As the city's largest convention hotel, the 1054-room Metropole offers 40 conference and meeting rooms, and two conference suites for up to 1,600 delegates and a third suite for over 1,000. The 28-story, 453-room Hilton Park Lane, overlooking Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park, can accommodate 1,100 in its Grand Ballroom, which can be divided into three sections.

Also on Park Lane is the historic Grosvenor House, built as a private residence and opened as a hotel in 1929. Its Great Room, the largest ballroom in London, was originally an ice rink and has a capacity of up to 2,000. Currently undergoing a multi-million pound restoration, Grosvenor House will boost its total accommodation offerings to 494 rooms upon completion later this year.

Other large convention hotels include the 630-room Novotel London West in Hammersmith and the 394-room Park Plaza Riverbank on the south side of the Thames.

Among the other convention options in London, the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Center (known as QE2)–across the street from Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament–offers 26 meeting rooms and can accommodate up to 1,300 in its largest space. Next door, up to 2,352 can be seated in the Great Hall of the Central Hall Westminster, a Renaissance-style Methodist church opened in 1912.

Two of the largest event venues are located to the east in the Docklands, a former industrial area on the waterfront (including the financial and shopping district at Canary Wharf), which has experienced a dramatic makeover in the last two decades. One of the major development projects was the construction of the Millennium Dome, reopened in 2005 as the 20,000-seat O2 arena, now used for major sporting and music events. During the 2012 Games, the site will host basketball and gymnastics.

Also in the former dock area is ExCeL, London's largest conference and exhibition space. Currently in a major expansion phase, the event space on the 100-acre campus will be increased to a total of 328,084 square feet by 2012, including a new auditorium with semi-permanent retractable seating for up to 5,000 and dropped floor space. The event halls feature pillar-free halls and moveable walls that can be adjusted to fit specific requirements. ExCeL will host seven Olympic sporting events.

In addition to the more traditional convention centers, some of the more memorable spaces (many appropriate for smaller receptions and banquets) available are London's tourist attractions, such as the Tower of London. There, groups can rent the White Hall, housing the Royal Armouries, and the Jewel House, where visitors can see the British Crown Jewels. Other historic venues include Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, the Natural History Museum and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. The architecturally-impressive Design Museum and the Tate Modern, as well as more offbeat sites such as the London Zoo and the London Dungeon, are also available for corporate events.  

But despite the plethora of event spaces, London has had difficulties drawing the largest conventions. "London has almost become a victim of its own success in terms of not being able to attract large international events," says Metropole's Ioannidis.

"One could identify three key reasons for this. The long-term strength of the GBP against the U.S. dollar and euro... is presenting London as an all round expensive destination. Secondly, the fact that there isn't a truly large congress center in London, with ExCeL, QE2 and the Hilton London Metropole [currently] being the largest, is also not helping. Lastly, the strength of corporate transient business, general tourism levels, and hotel brand diversity, although good for business, do not make for the right chemistry for London to offer a uniformed proposition to attract these large congresses," he says.

To help address these challenges, Visit London has launched a number of initiatives, including a citywide accommodation charter where major hotel chains, such as Hilton, Marriott, and Accor, will join forces to offer standard rates for large groups over 1,000.

Graveney says they have been working closely with ExCeL and other partners to win major congresses, which include large medical conferences with up to 15,000 delegates. "When I joined Visit London 15 months ago, the client feedback and perception was that London was complicated and difficult to deal with. It's the size, scope, and variety…We gathered a group of partners who want to win association business–venues, hotels, PCOs [Professional Conference Organizers]–and identified some key initiatives that would make the buying experience easier. The Citywide Accommodation Charter is the first initiative. Engaging travel partners like BA, Virgin, and Eurostar to obtain group rates by association is another [example]," she says.

Ioannidis is positive about the developments. "London is and will continue to be an exciting destination for business or leisure, and there is no doubt that the 2012 Olympics will re-establish London as a city capable of not only hosting events of that grand scale, but also remind buyers of the exciting diversity that it has to offer," he says.