Vienna for your greenest event yet
From sustainable site visits to eco-certified venues and meetings, trail-blazing public transport and generous amounts of green space, Vienna - rated the world’s most liveable city for 10 consecutive years – makes it easy to host your most sustainable event yet. And the local gastronomy is pretty good, too
Vienna is proud to be home to more than 40 venues certified by the Austrian Ecolabel, the nation’s most important state-certified environmental scheme. Its claim to be Europe’s greenest destination is thanks to the strong social and environmental standards that have been pioneered in Austria for decades.
Meeting participants at underground station Stadtpark (Pic credit: David Payr, WienTourismus)
Meeting participants at underground station Stadtpark (Pic credit: David Payr, WienTourismus)
It is easy to organise a ‘walkable congress’ in the city as many of the major hotels, venues and imperial landmarks are a stroll apart. But the city’s excellent public transport system helps delegates and visitors get around along with bike sharing, e-mopeds and e-scooters. The City Airport Train takes just 16 minutes from the airport to the city centre and meeting delegates can be provided with ‘Congress tickets’.
Innovative social enterprise
The magdas Hotel, ideal for meetings, is an excellent example of the type of socially progressive and innovative scheme Vienna does so well. Austria's first social business hotel, it goes out of its way to employ staff from the long-term unemployed including refugees, people with disabilities and former prisoners. It moved to a new location last year and the story of its development via crowdfunding, recycling and upcycling is inspirational. Learn more here
The coffee and cake is so good at Vollpension that at the weekend, queues form around the block for the famous Germ-Buchteln, a donut/brioche creation from Bohemia with damson filling and vanilla sauce. But this Viennese social enterprise and senior citizens’ café is much more than sweet treats. The founders wanted somewhere that would help tackle the problems of poverty and loneliness in old age. Creating a place where the young can learn from the elderly, pensioners are employed on mini-contracts that supplement their pensions to bake and wait tables. The latest project is a baking course run by grannies that could be excellent as a group team building event.
The Vienna Convention Bureau can assist organisers to integrate social impact workshops, social city tours or partnerships with projects including the Vollpension café and magdas Hotel. The VCB can also offer dedicated sustainable site visits including tours of certified venues, local restaurants and bespoke programmes that put social responsibility at the heart of an event’s agenda.
Highest quality of life
Vienna has been ranked the ‘most liveable city’ in the world for ten consecutive years, according to consulting company Mercer. The survey compares the political, social and economic climate, medical care, education and infrastructure such as public transport and utilities together with entertainment and hospitality including restaurants, theatres, cinemas, sports facilities, the availability and quality of consumer goods, as well as green spaces and environmental conditions.
About half of Vienna's surface is green space, comprised of parkland, gardens, farmland, vineyards and meadows, a biosphere park and a national park, making it ideal for walks and bicycle tours. And, of course, its art, music, culture and majestic architecture are world famous.
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