The Future of Congresses: The Copenhagen scenario model

Explore the Copenhagen Scenario Model, a groundbreaking approach shaping the future of congresses by addressing sustainability, digital innovation, and collaboration within the meetings industry.

The Future of Congresses 
The Copenhagen scenario model

Copenhagen CVB and BestCities have conducted an in-depth piece of future research in a unique collaboration with future scientists and designers. Explore four immersive scenarios for 2040 that spell out potential futures for our industry.

Explore the four scenarios

Associations, destinations – the global meeting industry as a whole – face new challenges. Future megatrends leave us with a lot of questions and a dire need to direct ourselves to become future ready, starting today. We are proud to present four future scenarios to all of you in the form of a future magazine, audio narratives, and online tools.

Anne Danielsen, Senior Service Designer of the Danish Design Centre runs through the process and explores four immersive scenarios for 2040 that spell out potential futures for our industry.
During the BestCities Global Forum held in 2019 in Copenhagen participants shared their experiences of going through the future scenarios exercise on the first day of the Forum.

Listen to the scenarios

These audio narratives are short stories that will make each of the four scenarios become real and relatable. You can listen to the stories whenever you like – in a learning context, at conferences, in strategy meetings or as inspiration in your own efforts to develop future solutions.

Shape the future

We invite everyone to explore the future. We have designed three future tools that will guide you in a reflection session, an explorative exercise and a final evaluation of the four scenarios.

Reflection card

Ask yourself, your colleagues or your business partners about their immediate reflections on each of the four scenarios. What opportunities do you discover? And what are the challenges you will be facing?

Download the instruction page, print the reflection cards and start your future reflections.

Download instruction page

Download reflection cards

Explorative exercise

Explore the impact that each of the four scenarios will have on associations, destinations, and the meeting concept. Feel free to design your own questions for investigating other future aspects that you find relevant to explore.

Download the instruction page, print the explorative exercise and start your future ideation.

Download instruction page

Download explorative exercise

Voting matrix

The scenarios are all probable. However, you might have your own preconceptions about the future, and you might find one of them more interesting than the others. Make your voting and ask others to do the same – you might see divergents, that will give rise to debate.

Download the instruction page, print the voting matrix and start your debate.

Download instruction page

Download voting matrix