When Lara Booth, senior marketing manager, Genesys Telecommunications Labs EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), finalized plans for G-Force Vienna, the company’s premier event for its EMEA customers, she was aware of the logistical nightmares that could occur. She was, after all, organizing a three-day event for 1,000 participants, utilizing several hotels and restaurants and arranging a massive party at a historic palace.

“This was the first time we used Vienna for this event,” Booth said from Genesys’ U.K. office in Frimley, Surrey. “The event lasted three days, and we were spread out over many hotels close to Austria Center Vienna, our convention center venue. We mainly used the Radisson Blu and Arcotel Kaisserwasser as our key hotel event properties, arranged the Hofburg Palace for our 1,000-guest party, and a variety of restaurants around the city on the first night.”

Austria Center Vienna © IAKW-AG Marius Hîfinger

If she was concerned about logistics before the event, her worries quickly subsided after contacting the Vienna Convention Bureau. “The team there was very helpful, especially in the early part of our event planning, when we were finding our feet as to what was available in the city for our large group. Vienna is truly a beautiful city, which was a big draw for our delegates — customers, partners and prospects — and its central location within the EMEA region really helped attendance.”

The fact that Genesys Telecommunications Labs, an American firm based in Daly City, Calif., enjoyed a successful corporate event in Vienna is a result of both good local planning assistance and the city itself. The Vienna Convention Bureau, part of the city’s large and efficient Tourist Board, has been on a run during the past five years as global corporate travel managers have finally come to understand Vienna is one of the most economically and politically stable urban environments in the world.

“We are getting more and more U.S. multinational companies organizing meetings in Vienna,” said Manfred J. Weinschenk of U.S. Commercial Services at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna. “Some of the reasons why U.S. and other multinational firms are coming here for business events include the high security compared to other cities, the efficient infrastructure, the availability of high-functioning conference facilities, and the beauty of the city and nearby countryside.”

The U.S. Embassy in Vienna practices what it preaches by hosting many of its own diplomatic and cultural events in various areas of the city, including annual performances by The United States Air Force Band at Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier — a “hip and vibrant location that appeals to locals as well as tourists because of its great museums, lively cafés and artist galleries,” according to Roland Fuchs, the embassy’s public affairs officer.

Last year, more than 3,300 congresses and corporate events were held in Vienna, contributing more than $1.2 billion to Austria’s gross domestic product and about 17,500 year-round jobs. The importance of meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions is stronger now than ever before. “There has been an especially rapid increase in the fields of human medicine, the arts and IT/telecommunications, which is very beneficial to Vienna’s meetings industry,” said Christian Mutschlechner, director, Vienna Convention Bureau. “We have a very high reputation in medicine, our history in music and the arts is well known, and our expertise with respect to green meetings gives us a competitive advantage among the younger IT meeting planners.”

Vienna’s three main convention centers include Austria Center Vienna, with 236,000 square feet, 180 breakout rooms and nine cafeterias. The 4-star, 282-room ARCOTEL Kaiserwasser Wien is located nearby, as is the new 253-room Meliá Vienna.

Hofburg Vienna is one of the most unique MICE venues in Europe. Constructed in 1259 as an imperial residence, the Baroque buildings that compose the Hofburg complex have been expanded over the centuries to include several iconic and historic structures. In 1958, parts of the complex were opened to groups as a convention facility, offering 182,000 square feet accommodating up to 4,900 people. Vienna’s city center, with more than 8,000 hotel rooms, is within walking distance.

The stylish expanse of the glass façade of Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center offers Vienna’s largest total floor space with 788,000 square feet, including several large exhibition halls. Opened in 2004 just outside the city center, it is the newest of Vienna’s three major convention centers and, like all commercial venues in the city, easily accessible by public transport.

Although Vienna’s traditional deluxe properties — like the Sacher, Imperial and Bristol — continue to attract upscale leisure and business guests, the hotel scene has seen a shift in recent years to more contemporary 5-star, design-driven properties. It started in 2010 with the opening of the Jean Nouvel-designed, 182-room Sofitel St. Stephansdom, an eclectic 18-story tower overlooking the Danube canal and picturesque St. Stephen’s Cathedral. With the trendy Le Loft lounge and restaurant on the top floor, this center-city hotel is a popular venue for Gen X business travelers. The first Austrian Ritz-Carlton property opened in Vienna in 2012, with 202 luxurious guestrooms and meeting space in four landmark palatial buildings on the upscale Ringstrasse.

Ritz-Carlton’s entry into the Viennese market set the stage for a flurry of additional deluxe hotel openings, including the 63-room boutique Sans Souci Wien in late 2012, designed by Philippe Starck’s yoo Studio and situated next to the popular MuseumsQuartier. The Palais Hansen Kempinski opened in mid-2013 in a beautifully restored 1873 former hotel, offering 152 guestrooms, expansive meeting facilities and a modern interior by Jean-Claude Laville’s Paris-based DESSEINS Interior Design Studio. The Guest House Vienna, a 39-room center-city boutique hotel, opened in October 2013 with a beautifully clean and spare interior by British designer Sir Terence Conran. The hotel caters to upscale business travelers and small corporate groups, and its Brasserie & Bakery offers fresh-baked goods and its own custom-roasted coffee, two Viennese traditions. The 4-star Meliá Vienna, part of the Spanish Sol Meliá Group, opened in December 2013, occupying the lower 15 floors of Austria’s tallest building, the 58-story Dominique Perrault-designed DC Tower 1 on the Danube.

A 143-room, 5-star Park Hyatt is expected to open in 2014 within a complex of historic buildings in the city’s Old Town district near the Golden Quarter, a luxury shopping zone that developers are constructing nearby. Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts is not confirming when, or even if, a 320-room Four Seasons will open in 2015. The plan to open a Four Seasons Vienna was nixed by corporate brass two years ago, but apparently new developers have come forward with exciting ideas. Vienna’s tourism officials are cautiously optimistic the Four Seasons development team will see it through this time. The recent surge of new properties, from budget to deluxe, will increase the number of hotel rooms in the city to 63,500 by the end of 2014.

Most of Vienna’s public venues for MICE leisure activities will open off-hours for group functions. The MuseumsQuartier complex includes the Leopold Museum and MUMOK (Museum of Modern Art), as well as numerous art galleries and food and beverage outlets. Concert halls, historic palaces, the Vienna Opera House and the popular Prater (a large park with a 19th-century Ferris wheel) are all close to hotels and convention centers. Vienna is the only world capital producing significant amounts of wine within the city limits, and nearby wineries, along with Danube riverboats, are perfect venues for off-site events.