BY late September, when one really should be back at school, it will be time to lock up your mothers as Rod Stewart christens the new SSE Hydro Arena in Glasgow with a four-day residency.

The number of dates might tell you all you need to know about the enduring popularity of the man they used to call Rod the Mod, but behind the scenes a group of executives and city planners are rubbing their hands for a very different reason.

The opening of the 12,000-seater Hydro, which cost £125 million to build, means that a number of concerts that were previously staged in the neighbouring Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre (SECC) will now take place at the new venue.

This will free up the SECC to concentrate on its other two purposes in life: hosting exhibitions and conferences. This will remove a serious barrier to opportunity at Scotland's biggest conference venue after many years in which it regularly had to choose one type of booking over the other.

This is arriving hot on the heels of the extension to the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC). The centre has spent more than £30m on new conference facilities that are arguably the most advanced in Europe, as part of a wider £85m project.

The EICC was completed in May, and hosted a major event shortly afterwards at which former US president Bill Clinton was the speaker. The new arrivals mean that both cities have moved up a gear in good time for 2014. As if anyone needs reminding, next year the world's eyes will be on Scotland thanks to the Homecoming, the Commonwealth Games, the Ryder Cup and, of course, the independence referendum. The Scottish events industry is seeing it as the perfect opportunity to showcase the country at its best with a view to boosting its own credentials. Scotland has long had an enviable reputation for international conferences. Known as business tourism in the trade, Edinburgh and Glasgow do particularly well at attracting obscure but lucrative medical and life sciences events, such as Edinburgh's recent International Conference on Neutron Scattering. Aberdeen takes a large slice of the European oil and gas events market, not least last week's Offshore Europe mega-gathering.

One of the attractions of these kinds of conferences is that they are virtually recession proof, since they are often organised many years in advance. VisitScotland's dedicated Business Tourism Unit (BTU) is currently laying the groundwork for attracting conferences as far away as 2022.

These sit at the top of a much wider industry, which includes everything from domestic conferences to black-tie dinners to corporate jollies.

The UK arm of global association Meeting Professionals International recently commissioned a study of the UK industry. Stats fiends might be interested to know that the so-called meetings industry is worth £58 billion to the UK, contributing 2.9% of GDP and establishing itself as the 17th biggest employer.

In Scotland, the industry produced a gross value added (GVA) of £1.9bn in 2011. This was more than twice that of Wales, on a par with North West England, ahead of Yorkshire/Humber, but slightly behind the West Midlands and rather further behind the South East.

Scotland's sector generated 9.3% of the UK GVA, with only 8.4% of the population, suggesting it is somewhat stronger than you might expect. This was despite the fact that the 87,000-odd "meetings" it organised in 2011 represented only 6.6% of the UK total. That would suggest that what it lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in quality.

David Hornby, the former commercial director of Visit London, who runs events consultancy Why Not and is based in West Sussex, says: "Scotland is blessed with some good facilities in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen and punches above its weight a bit. And having the Scottish Government means there is more budget to support events than in England."

He singles out the SECC which, like the AECC in Aberdeen, benefits from its ability to host big exhibitions as well as conferences. The two often go together, meaning that certain conferences will be beyond your capabilities unless you have the exhibition space to match.

Ben Goedegebuure, the director of sales at the SECC, says the centre has been "booming" during the downturn years, partly shielded by those long lead times for the international conferences.

Where the SECC has found life harder is on the exhibitions side, at one stage losing the Ideal Homes Show, although it returned to the venue several years later.

Goedegebuure says: "Our strength is in public exhibitions. They had a tougher time getting exhibitors because companies were getting affected by the recession."

One of the agency's hopes with the new Hydro is that it will be able to persuade more trade shows to come to the SECC. David Hornby does not think this will be easy, since such expos rely on enough industry representatives coming to browse, which only really works if there is critical mass nearby.

Having said that, Hornby talks up the joined-up approach between the SECC and other city players such as the airport, the council and the local marketing bureau. This helps to make amends for the collapses of the planned Glasgow Airport rail link and the cross-rail project to connect the two main railway stations.

Hornby adds: "I am not convinced Edinburgh does such a good job. It's a bit like London in that it's slightly full of self-importance. It has the EICC but it loses out to Glasgow because Glasgow has more of an aggressive sales approach."

Louise Andrew, head of sales and marketing at the EICC, rejects any such suggestion. "We, as a city, have to work hard for every piece of business that we win," she says. "Nobody sits back and waits for it to come through the door."

Last weekend, she says, the EICC brought a group of clients to the city and co-ordinated with nine other stakeholder groups in the city from taxi firms to the National Museum to the Royal Yacht Britannia as part of the pitch.

The EICC is understandably proud of its extension, which makes it possible to host two conferences at the same time. It has also added the Lennox Suite, with a unique moving floor which can handle banquets of 2000 people - more than double its previous maximum. It also boasts multiple levels that make events for sport, music and entertainment possible for the first time.

Andrew also disagrees with concerns from other events specialists in Scotland about the hire price of the centre, which is considerably higher than in Glasgow.

"People are buying the new space for next year and beyond, so that's testament to the fact that people feel it is good value for money."

While these premier venues have fared relatively well in the tough years thanks to international conferences, the same cannot be said for the industry as a whole.

One area that has particularly suffered has been the "jollies", known more formally as incentive schemes. These involve blue-chip companies taking their staff for a few days' holiday and team-building.

Scotland had done well in this space, particularly with Americans coming in search of a little whisky and tartan. There are no such obvious selling points for the English provincial cities, for example.

Lizzie Fisher, co-founder of Origin Events in Edinburgh, says: "As soon as 2008 hit, even events that our clients had paid for were pulled because they couldn't be seen to be doing them."

Domestic conferences have come under pressure for similar reasons. "All those kinds of events were deemed to be luxuries," says Neil Brownlee, who heads up the BTU at VisitScotland.

"You had people like President Obama saying, 'Don't spend the public dime on things like conferences'. The whole industry was reeling from that."

In this climate, five-star hotels suffered even where they were slashing their prices to four-star levels because businesses and Government agencies knew how it would look if they were caught spending too much.

Companies would send five delegates when previously they would have sent 10 or 15, putting pressure on conference organisers. City-centre hotels, meanwhile, became preferred to country resorts because it would mean that companies could send executives for just a few hours rather than having to give them up for the entire day.

The sense is that these trends have moderated in the past couple of years. Some say they are having a good 2013, while others admit privately that times are still considerably harder than they were before 2008.

Brownlee nevertheless says that life is better than it was a decade ago, pointing to not only the EICC and SECC upgrades by the refurbishments of the likes of the Sheraton Grand and The Caledonian in Edinburgh and new hotels like Blythswood Square and Grand Central in Glasgow.

"All the investment that has been carried out in the quieter years means improvements to the business tourism portfolio," he says.

Brownlee thinks the offering has come together at just the right time ahead of next year's climax.

"We have got a lot of momentum at the right time," he says.