Association of British Professional Conference Organisers
International Association of Professional Congress Organisers
International Congress & Convention Association
Professional Convention Management Association
Meetings Industry Association - UK conference Organisers
Meeting Professionals International
Conclusion
We have seen that business travel and tourism is a very old phenomenon but that it has grown, probably, more in the last fifty years than in all the previous centuries put together. It has also been seen that it is now a truly global industry, and that new special forms of business tourism have developed in the last few decades of the twentieth century. However, at the end of the chapter, we have noted that there are some doubts over the future of business travel and tourism.
Discussion points and essay questions
1 Discuss what you consider to be the three most important factors in the growth of business travel and tourism since 1950.
2 Discuss and explain the current geography of business travel and tourism demand.
What lessons can we learn from the history of business travel and tourism that might help accurately to predict its future?
Exercise
Select one of the following forms of business travel and tourism:
• conferences or conventions
• trade fairs and exhibitions
• individual business trips.
Produce a brief history of your chosen subject from its beginnings to the present day, highlighting changes in its nature and geography. You should note any problems you have in obtaining relevant information.
Chapter 2. What is influenced on MICE-tourism development
On completion of this chapter students should be able to understand:
- The demand side of MICE tourism
- The impacts of MICE tourism
The demand side of business travel and tourism
Given the complexity of business travel and tourism, any attempt to seek to measure its volume is almost certainly doomed to failure. Data is collected on different bases in different countries and it can be a considerable time between the collection of data and its publication. Furthermore, much data is collected for commercial purposes and is never published.
There is also considerably more data available on conferences and meetings than on incentive travel or exhibitions, for example. This information has a bias towards conferences and meetings, although it does endeavour to consider all types of business travel and tourism.
However, before we begin to look at the demand for business travel and tourism, in statistical terms, we need to say a few words about the nature of demand, in this field, in general.
First, we need to recognize that demand in business travel and tourism has two dimensions, namely, the customer and the consumer.
Customers and consumers
A major difference between business travel and leisure travel is the fact that in the former, there is often a clear distinction between the customer and the consumer.
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Customer
- Employers or sponsoring organizations who make decisions that employees will travel, or give permission for employees to travel
- Employers or sponsoring organizations who usually pay the bill for the travel undertaken by employees or representatives
Consumer
- Employees who actually travel and consume business travel and tourism services
- Employees and representatives who travel but do not usually pay the bills themselves
While this is clearly a gross simplification of the situation it is still valid and helps explain one of the key perceived characteristics of the business travel and tourism market, namely the idea that business travel is less price elastic than leisure travel because, often, the business traveller him or herself is not paying the bill. However, this generalization does not apply to the self-employed, who constitute a significant proportion of the business travel and tourism market.
At the same time the customer and consumer can often be one and the same person or body. For example, the scientific committee of an international association conference will be both customer and consumer. They decide on the conference venue, pay to attend the event, and then attend and consume a range of travel and tourism services in so doing.
Motivators
The motivators for business travel will be different for the customers and consumers and perhaps in relation to different types of business travel. Let us look at some hypothetical examples to illustrate this point.
The managing director of a UK-based food company books a stand for the company at a trade fair in France. He wants to raise the profile of the company and increase sales in France, as cheaply as possible. He selects Mr 'A' to represent the company at this event because he speaks good French. Mr 'A also has a taste for French food and wine and sees this as an ideal opportunity to indulge in both at the company's expense. He also sees it as an ideal opportunity to make contact with French companies to help him get a job in France. He spends lots of money but devotes little time to selling his own company's products.
Playtime Inc., a young computer games company decides to take staff on an incentive travel trip to help with team-building and to encourage staff to work harder in the future. The company does not explain this to the staff, who therefore think the trip is a reward for past efforts which, to be honest, have not been that great. The staff see this trip as a 'freebie', a perk, some fun at the company's expense. Not surprisingly, the trip is not a great success.
The head of the Philosophy School at Newton University gives permission for Dr Socrates to attend the International Symposium on German philosophers and their work, in Acapulco. This conference is part of Dr Socrates' staff development and is designed to help her keep up to date with developments in her field. It is also intended to give her an opportunity to network and raise the profile of the university's new MA in the Philosophical Aspects of Mobile Phone Use. Dr Socrates has other ideas, however, and prefers to spend most of the conference discussing the philosophy of coastal tourism, on the beach, with an attractive male philosopher from the University of Nether Hampton!
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All three scenarios illustrate the potential for a gap in the motivators of customers and consumers in the different areas of business travel and tourism.
The structure of demand
Business travel and tourism demand has a number of dimensions. Clearly, in its simplest sense it is the number of people travelling for business purposes in a particular region, country or worldwide.
However, this total demand can be subdivided in a number of ways:
- Frequency of travel
- The level of demand for particular destinations
- The level of demand for particular venues
- Expenditure during the trip
- The duration of the trip
- The purpose of the trip and the type of business tourism
- The level of demand for different types of accommodation
- The level of demand for the products and services of particular suppliers and intermediaries
- The seasonality of demand
- The segmentation of the market on the basis on type of employer, age, sex, race and nationality (for example)