“MICE” industry - an acronym for 'meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions and it is not reflects all aspects of traveling with business purposes. At the same time for the layperson the terms 'travel' and 'tourism' may be synonymous with leisure and pleasure, the importance of business travel is widely acknowledged in official and technical definitions. The World Tourism Organisation’s official definition of tourism, for example, suggests that people travelling for business or professional purposes can also be considered as tourists (WTO, 1993).
In many cases, the terms 'business tourism' and 'business travel' are used interchangeably as generic terms to describe these different sectors.
In broad terms, business travel comprises all trips whose purpose is linked the traveller's employment or business interests. These trips may be necessary in order to enable the actual work to be carried out; or they may enable the employee to learn how to do their job more effectively; or they may be given by the employer as a reward for a job well done. Most of the forms of travel covered in this book are, therefore, work-related. According to Devidson (2002) they are as follows:
• Individual business travel: comprises the trips made by those whose employment requires them to travel in order to carry out their work. From journalists and politicians to talent-spotters and accident investigators, there is a wide range of jobs that can be done effectively only when those who do them are prepared to accept being away from home and their workplace base regularly as a normal feature of their work.
• Meetings: includes the vast range of events, such as conferences, training seminars, product launches and annual general meetings, that are held by companies and associations in order to facilitate communication with and between their employees, customers, shareholders and members.
• Exhibitions: also known as trade fairs, trade shows and consumer shows. Exhibitions of this type are events to which businesses send sales staff in order to display their products - from farm machinery to wedding dresses - to potential customers, who attend in order to buy and/or receive expert information about the goods being exhibited, usually straight from the manufacturers.
• Incentive trips: comprises those trips - usually luxurious and often to attractive destinations - that employees receive from their employer as a prize for winning a competition related to their job, e.g. selling more life insurance policies than anyone else on the staff, or being part of the sales team that increases its sale of photocopiers by a higher percentage than all other teams.
• Corporate hospitality: consists of the often lavish entertainment that companies extend to their most valuable clients or potential clients at prestigious sporting and cultural events. Companies mainly use this form of entertainment as a way of creating goodwill and building rapport with V1P customers and potential customers.
Above mentioned sectors could be subdivided into 'individual business travel' and 'business tourism', the latter including the meetings, exhibitions, incentive travel and corporate hospitality sectors. This subdivision is not arbitrary: it highlights two separate types of activity sharing quite distinct characteristics.
Individual business travel is composed of trips made to carry out duties that are a regular and necessary part of the traveller's employment. Such trips are most often made by the individual travelling alone, and the destination is usually predetermined by the demands of the job to be done: the traveller must go to wherever the client to be visited is based, or to where the problem is to be solved, or to where the contract is to be signed, i.e. the destination is fixed. This is the only nondiscre-tionary sector of business travel: the destination is not chosen, but is determined by the object of the work that has to be carried out.
The other sectors, which may be grouped together as business tourism, are discretionary. The destinations for most meeting events, exhibitions, incentive trips and corporate hospitality events are 'floating', i.e. there is a degree of flexibility in the decision as to where they may be held. For this reason, these sectors are 'the prime focus of marketing activities by venues and destinations, because decisions about where the events take place are open to influence' (Rogers, 1998; p.19). Attendance at such events, which constitute a more occasional aspect of working life, often takes the form of group travel, with colleagues travelling together or meeting there.
Referring hack to the wide range of activities and events included here under the term 'business travel', it is clear that:
• there are forms of business travel that are not business related;
• there are forms of business travel that involve very little travel.
An example of the former case would be any conference where the motivation to meet is not to discuss issues related to the delegates' jobs or profession. For instance, many associations meet regularly because their members share an interest in voluntary or charity work (Rotary International), the same faith (the Association of Independent Methodists) or the same hobby (Harley Davidson Riders' Club of Great Britain).
Business travel sectors that involve very little actual travel would be, for example, one-day meetings held in the seminar room of a local hotel, or a group of London-based clients spending an afternoon drinking Pimms, eating strawberries and watching tennis at a corporate entertainment event at Wimbledon.
However, despite their apparent status as exceptions to the rule, all of the above events and activities will be considered as lying firmly within the scope of this book's subject matter. They would certainly all be regarded by suppliers such as conference centres, hotels and catering companies as being in the same general market as the other types of business travel already discussed. And while transport operators such as airlines and high-speed train companies may call into question the use of the term 'business travel' to describe events attended by people who live or work locally, it is unlikely that taxi companies and operators of public transport, for example, would share their concern.
A final point to be emphasised regarding the classification of business travel activities as shown in Figure 1.1 is that, very often, elements of two or more categories are combined in the same event. For example, a motivational conference held for a dozen company executives in Monte Carlo clearly contains aspects of a classic incentive trip in addition to the meeting element. Indeed, in the company's desire to use the event as a reward for its executives, the 'conference' clement may simply be a short pep talk from the managing director flown in on the final day for the occasion.
The same type of hybrid events is found in the growing number of conferences that are accompanied by an exhibition on the same theme and usually in the same venue. For example, organisers of a conference on the theme of an aspect of medical research may invite representatives of pharmaceutical companies to buy exhibition space for their stands in a hall adjacent to the conference room. There are three potential advantages of combining events in this way:
• The exhibition earns revenue, which offsets the cost of the conference for organisers and delegates.
• It gives the exhibiting companies the opportunity to present their products to an interested market.
• It provides the delegates with an additional reason for attending the event.