The China National Convention Centre (CNCC) in Beijing hosted 663 events during its first full year of operation – including 14 international exhibitions and 54 international conferences.

And those figures look set to be smashed after centre managers confirmed they had already staged 116 events in January this year - compared to 70 in January 2010.

General manager Liu HaiYing said: “This is the second January we have experienced since we opened our business and in this month we increased our total number of events by 46.  As January is the most popular month for company annual meetings, I believe we will do better year after year as our venue becomes established as a key prestigious location within our city for this type of event.”

More than 717,000 people visited the 63,000sqm (23,000sqm in the convention centre) venue from January 1 – December 31 2010. Almost 200,000 of those delegates were attending international events. The most popular months for international events, as for other locations worldwide, were October and September .

The CNCC, which is right next to the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium, opened in July 2009.

Liu added: “Our goal is to offer a bridge of communication to the rest of the world; to exchange information with international organisers and offer guidance on how they can bring their events to China.  We welcome feedback and in 2010 instigated client feedback surveys, as well as internal surveys of the 1,200 staff, both run by independent market research companies – this is a really new step for convention venues in China.”