Five hundred people, plus another 300 staff. These will be the numbers of the delegations that tomorrow and Sunday will be present at the Nuvola dell’Eur for the G20 in Rome (1,400 accredited journalists will instead be hosted in the nearby media center of the Palazzo dei Congressi). This is one of the main stages of the relaunch of the Congress Center designed by Massimiliano Fuksas’ studio, which aims to finally put the very difficult moment of the pandemic behind it: the Cloud has gone from 132 days of occupation in 2019 to 24 in 2020, with revenues (from rentals to services for events) fell from 8.2 million to 2.4 million. “2021 will still be affected by the impact of the pandemic, despite an extraordinary end of the year”, explains Antonio Rosati, CEO of Eur spa since July 2020. The company, 90% owned by the Ministry of Economy and 10% by Roma Capitale, manages the real estate assets of the historic Eur district of Rome. Since last Christmas, the group (135 employees) has been interested in a rationalization work that has led Eur spa to incorporate the Roma Convention Group (which was always 100% owned by Eur spa), the company that managed the the congress center of the Nuvola di Fuksas and the Palazzo dei Congressi, also at Eur.
«In 2021 – continues Rosati – we will close again as a group with an estimated loss of around 7 million. But in 2022 we have already booked 108 days of occupation of the Nuvola and our goal is to return to a group turnover of 35-40 million “after 22.8 in 2020. The ten conferences expected at the Nuvola next year (from that of the Italian Society of Otolaryngology to that of the Italian Society of Medical and Interventional Radiology) will bring nearly 23,000 participants. To these must be added the 20 thousand visitors for Roma Sposa (the fair dedicated to newlyweds), the 100 thousand expected for Più Libri, Più Liberi (the national fair of small and medium publishing) and the 25 thousand expected for Roma Arte in Nuvola (the exhibition market which will bring great modern and contemporary art to the city).
But the activity of the Cloud will not stop there. Eur spa aims to increase large associative and corporate events at European and US level in the congress center, and then open up to the markets of Eastern Europe, Asia and India.
«In the happiest times before the pandemic – continues the CEO of Eur spa – the congress center reached 130-140 days of occupation a year. Our goal is to reach 170-180 days at full capacity. But more can not be done. This is why we asked ourselves: how can we make the structure usable 365 days a year? ». In the meantime, the answer was given by organizing over 100 events from September 15th to June 29th with 600 artists and personalities from the world of culture. This is the first edition of Riemergere, conceived by Eur Culture for Rome and created by Eur spa between the Cloud, the Palazzo dei Congressi and the entire district. «From February then – says Rosati – the guided tours of the Cloud by the schools will begin. All our non-congress activities have the ambition in 2022 to attract 500 thousand visitors ». There are also a series of reopening in the neighborhood next year, from the Planetarium to the Museum of Roman Civilization. Not to mention the Aquarium, a work whose construction sites started in 2008 and which has not yet seen the light: «We plan to open by Christmas 2022 – underlines Rosati -. A structure that will guarantee 400 jobs ».
The Cloud also comes from the experience of the vaccination hub. In the facility, 600,000 anti-Covid doses were administered to 450,000 people: “A city like Florence,” explains Rosati. The hub was closed at the end of September, but “if the Region were to ask us to continue with the administration, we could offer the availability of the Palazzo dei Congressi”, he continues. Indirectly, the Nuvola hub, visited by numerous international newspapers, also had a marketing effect worth an estimated 7 million.