Brussels International - Tourism & Congress (BI-TC) Brussels International is the expression of the same single priority: to please our visitors, making them want to recommend Brussels as a destination. It is with this aim in mind that BITC has organised itself as a private enterprise into marketing, promotion and operations departments in order to work together to prepare for selling Brussels as a destination, a sphere reserved for private sector enterprises. The BITC departments City Marketing & Image Brussels has to create order in the proliferation of initiatives with its best interests at heart. It has to build up a competitive coherence which creates a specific image based on the roots of its identity. The role of the City Marketing department is to structure what Brussels has to offer around 3 mainstays : < international cultural life, consisting of heritage such as comic strip and Art Nouveau, festivals and public celebrations as well as little shops and avant-garde designers; < the widely acknowledged art de vivre, consisting of parks and gardens of incomparable charm, cafés with welcoming outside tables, trendy districts and an enviable cuisine; < the capital city par excellence where Europe gets along in the many villages of Europeans, which are a compendium of the reality of this global project. The main role of City Marketing is to draw people to Brussels by promoting an image that’s different from the one conveyed by the big political media. Its high profile is achieved, above all, by a Web site www.brusselsinternational.be and paper publications, which are there to guide those who want to explore and discover Brussels. Its targets are city tourists looking for a short stay in Europe, European residents and students, long-distance travellers from other continents and the Belgians themselves. Promotion & Convention-visitors bureau Brussels International - Tourism & Congress is the official Brussels Convention & Visitors Bureau. we are here to help you organize your fairs, conferences, exhibitions and other events by providing you with complete information and independent advice to meet your particular needs, free of charge. our highly knowledgeable meeting consultants’ staff is at your disposal to supply information on all aspects of conference organization in every phase of the organizational process. we can therefore put you in contact with venues, hotels with meeting facilities, local professional congress organizers (PCO), destination management companies (DMC) and other service suppliers to help you meet any specific conference need. If Brussels is a serious option for your event, we can also arrange for a site inspection visit to show you a selection of possible venues and hotels. Try out the RFP on our website www.brusselsinternational.be . Hospitality & Operations Attracting people here isn’t enough: we also have to give visitors a warm and friendly "Brussels-style" welcome in every language ! That welcome will make them tell their friends and acquaintances what a great experience discovering the European village of Brussels is, an experience to be recommended . Providing that welcome is not the exclusive privilege of the 3 tourist offices but is a privilege shared with a smile by everyone in the city from taxi drivers, café waiters, hoteliers and others… through to the hotel room booking Web site "BRUres". For the Operations side, the Region entrusts this department with organising BRUSSELS DAYS abroad in cooperation with BRUSSELS EXPORT and A.B.E. Large Events Office (BGE) Set up in May 2005, the BGE is the events department responsible for organising large events with a tourism-cultural purpose. This is the one-stop shop for the very many requests to organise activities. It facilitates the task of organisers by reducing the number of contact partners for the necessary permits (police, highway, trade, etc.). On the one hand, the BGE also helps to rationalise the work of the subsidising authorities, which can refer organisers to a single body. The role of the BGE is to contribute to the cultural policy of City Marketing by creating complementary large-scale events such as Winter Wonders, Iris Day, Brussels-on-Sea or the Brussels summer festival, which meet a competitive demand from the large urban leisure and business tourism market. Filming Office BruxellesTournage (Brussels Filming) serves as a one-stop shop for permits to film in public areas in the Brussels Capital Region, being in close contact with the authorities in charge. It also acts as a facilitator for those involved in film productions for cinema. In addition, BruxellesTournage promotes Brussels as a film location and provides a photo library on its Web site, because being seen in the cinema is part of the image and makes people want to discover the destination, which has become a screen star in its own right!