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Félix Martínez Touriño, new Managing Director of the CCIB

Apr 17, 2008

Félix Martínez has been named the new Managing Director of GL Events CCIB SL, the management company for the Barcelona International Convention Centre (CCIB). Martínez is taking over from Jesús Álvarez Gallego, who will be moving on to new professional challenges after four years running the Barcelona complex. The new managing director of the CCIB is 36 years old and is an Adviser in Tourist Business and Activities with a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Madrid Chamber of Commerce.

Martínez’s entire career to date has been within the hotel industry and he has held positions of responsibility in a number of international establishments owned by companies such as Disney and Barceló. Outstanding among these are the Hotel Barceló La Bobadilla (Granada), the tourism complex Barceló Bávaro Beach Resort (Dominican Republic) and the Hotel Barceló Reina Cumayasa (Dominican Republic). In recent years, he has been employed by the AC Hotel chain as the Director of some of its establishments in Spain, including the hotel AC Front Marítim or the AC Barcelona, both located in the Catalan capital.

/// About CCIB and GL Events

The CCIB is one of the largest Convention Centres in Europe, capable of accommodating up to 15,000 delegates in an architecturally innovative space facing the Barcelona coastline. Built to house the International Forum of the Cultures in 2004, the exhibition site has hosted over 320 events, corporative as well as the most relevant European and world congresses in the medical and pharmaceutical sphere. The CCIB counts with 112 employees and indirectly generates employment for more than 400 professionals in the fields of audiovisual engineering, IT, maintenance, security, catering, logistics and cleaning. Recently, CCIB received the silver award for best international conventions centre at the 2008 M&IT Awards, which can be added to the bronze award received for the same category last year, and the award for best technologically equipped convention centre in the world, presented by the International Association of Congress Centres (AIPC).

The CCIB is a member of the International Congress & Convention Association (ICCA), the International Association of Congress Centres (AIPC), the Spanish Association of Congress Centres (APCE), Barcelona Convention Bureau (BCB) and OPC España. GL Events-CCIB, S.L., the congress centre’s management company, is owned by Barcelona City Council (12%), the Hotels Association of Barcelona (8%) and by the French company GL Events (80%), a European leader in conference centre management and major events logistics, with a turnover of 633.5 million euros in 2007.

The company, whose head office is in Brignais, directly operates 25 congress centres, exhibition parks and multipurpose spaces with a combined usable area of over a million square metres. In addition to the CCIB, these include the Battersea Park Events Arena (London, UK), the Riocentro Convention Center (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), the Lyon International Convention Centre (France), the Toulouse Exhibition Center (France), the Parc Floral in Paris (France) and the Grande Halle in Auvergne (France). GL centres have hosted more than 2,600 events, and the company has also directly organised more than 200 events. The French company has also been involved in the logistics of high profile events such as the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, the 2007 Pan American Games, and the 2004 European Cup in Portugal, and will take part in the organisation of the Beijing Olympics.

Contact name: CCIB Communications Department

Contact email: comunicacion@ccib.es