Marketing Destinations and Venues for Conferences, Conventions and Business Events

Tony Rogers, Rob Davidson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317528784
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Marketing Destinations and Venues for Conferences, Conventions and Business Events introduces students to key areas of marketing and promotion that are essential if destinations are to compete successfully in the rapidly expanding global business event sector. It achieves this by looking at issues surrounding business event marketing, strategic planning, destination and venue selling strategies and future challenges.

The 2nd Edition has also been updated to include:

• New content on: destination marketing organisations' and venues' use of technology, use and impact of social media, sponsorship and partnership issues, economic changes as well as their responses to demand for sustainable meetings locations
• Updated and new case studies on growth areas and emerging markets e.g. Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe/Russia, Africa and South America, but also to include material on mature markets, destinations and venue operators
• A genuinely international focus in terms of content and examples
• New review and discussion questions and, where appropriate, learning outcomes
• New online resource package for students and lecturers including: weblinks, power point slides and project questions (coming soon).

Accessible, global and informative, this is essential reading for all future business event and conference managers.

Chapter 1

The role of marketing and selling in the convention and business events sector

Chapter overview

This chapter examines how the conference industry has developed through time, reviews the principal stakeholders in the industry and analyses its impacts. It also analyses how marketing as a process has evolved and it highlights the distinguishing characteristics of venue and destination marketing.

This chapter covers:

• The history of the conference industry

• The products of the conference market

• The stakeholders operating in the conference market

• The role of marketing in the conference industry

• The impacts of the conference industry

It includes case studies on:

• The Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre winning the AMSA National Convention

• The economic significance of meetings for the US economy

• Marketing Moscow as a conference destination

LEARNING OUTCOMES

On completion of this chapter, you should be able to:

• explain why and how the conference industry developed in the way it did;

• discuss the different products and segments of demand in the conference industry;

• understand the roles of the main stakeholders;

• define how the role of marketing has evolved and its current use by the conference industry; and

• recognise the main positive and negative impacts that are created by the conference sector.

Introduction

The human desire to meet and exchange ideas, the basis of conventions and meetings, is as old as humankind.

(Weber and Chon, 2002)

In 1895, Milton Carmichael, a journalist, suggested in The Detroit Journal that local business leaders should join forces to promote that city as a meetings destination, as well as to represent Detroit and its many hotels in bidding to win conference business. Two weeks later, the ‘Detroit Convention and Businessmen’s League’ was formed, the world’s first conference destination and conference venue marketing organisation. We will never know how Milton Carmichael would have reacted to the fact that, from those humble beginnings in Detroit, during the following century, conference destination and conference venue marketing would have evolved into a major profession, using modern, sophisticated techniques to support and sustain today’s multi-billion dollar, global conference industry. Just to take the example of his own country, we can only imagine his response to the knowledge that the US meetings industry contributed over US$115 billion to the GDP in 2012, while directly and indirectly supporting jobs for more than 1.7 million Americans (CIC, 2014).

The history of the conference industry

Although humankind has gathered together to confersince the dawn of civilisation – witnessed still today by the remains of ancient meeting sites such as the Agora of Athens and the Roman Forum – it was not until the latter half of the twentieth century that a specific ‘conference industry’ was recognised as a commercial activity in its own right. The rapid expansion of this industry on a global scale since the 1950s has been instrumental in creating the need for professionalism in all sectors of the conference industry.

Throughout the centuries, organised gatherings were always an essential element of cultural, political and commercial life; indeed, they contributed significantly to the progress made by society as a whole. The vast majority of such meetings were held locally, in locations such as public spaces, theatres and hotels. Later, the first purpose-built meetings venues, such as the elegant eighteenth century assembly rooms built in many British cities, were constructed.

Spiller (2002) notes that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as industrialisation spread through the US and Western Europe, the need for meetings between business leaders and other entrepreneurs materialised, adding to the numbers of those already meeting to discuss and exchange ideas on political, religious, literary, recreational and other varied topics. Advances in transport technology during the same period, combined with rising levels of prosperity for the growing middle-classes and the rise of the professions in many countries, created a more mobile society in which travel to conferences became an increasingly frequent activity for many.

Ford and Peeper (2007) note that the willingness of the American business community to meet and share their knowledge with each other (compared with the European tradition of secrecy in the business and industrial world that prevailed at that time) was a key factor in the growth of demand for conferences in the nineteenth century:

Adding to this willingness to share knowledge was the vast amount of knowledge that needed to be shared. The industrial revolution spawned a tremendous growth in the amount of information and that, in conjunction with the huge size of the United States and the growth of its railroad, helped create a meetings and convention business. The growth of the railroad also made it increasingly easy for people to meet with others and to learn about new things. The growth of cities, the creation of larger manufacturing organisations, and the pace of change all made it desirable and necessary for people to get together to talk about new manufacturing techniques, see new products, and talk about the challenges of managing a large number of people spread out over a wide geographic area.

Lawson (2000:11) suggests several factors that facilitated the rapid expansion of the conference industry in the second half of the twentieth century:

• Expansion of government and quasi-government organisations, together with an increasing need for meetings between the public and private sectors;

• Growth of multinational corporations and pan-national agencies, necessitating more interdepartmental and inter-regional meetings;

• Developments in association interests, co-operatives, professional groups and pressure groups;

• Changes in sales techniques, use of product launches and sales promotion meetings;

• The need to update information and methods through in-company management training, continuing professional development and attendance at ad hoc or scheduled meetings;

• Development of subject specialisation – conferences enabled experts to pass on information.

In response to this surge in demand for conferences, many cities throughout the industrialised world – and, later, in the developing world – recognising the potential economic benefits of hosting conferences, began equipping themselves with purpose-built conference centres, many of them capable of hosting the type of national and international events that can attract several thousand delegates. The idea of a purpose-built conference centre venue was first conceived in the US in the early 1960s and the trend then spread to Europe. For example, London’s Wembley Conference Centre, opened in 1977, was one of the first purpose-built conference centres in the UK and in its opening year saw more than 350,000 people visiting 300 events. Growing recognition of the need to market these facilities professionally, as well as the cities in which they were located, was an instrumental element in creating the professions of the destination and venue marketer.

Now, over 100 years after the creation of the world’s first convention bureau in Detroit, the conference industry is firmly established and it has become truly international in its scope. In the twenty-first century, this industry comprises the many millions of men and women worldwide who organise business events; who provide the services and facilities that conferences require, from interpretation to audio-visual equipment; and who are responsible for the marketing of venues and destinations. In today’s world, it is universally accepted that the most competitive conference destinations and venues are those that understand – and use – the full potential that marketing, as a management function, can offer their organisations.

This book focuses on the marketing techniques used, and the more general knowledge required, by those whose role it is to attract conferences and other business events to the venues and destinations that employ them. These men and women play a vital part in satisfying the apparently unstoppable demand for conferences and other types of business events throughout the modern world. The future expansion of this industry is assured: humans are, above all, a gregarious animal, and there can be no doubt that the need to gather regularly with others who share a common interest is one of the most human of all activities.

The products of the conference market

In marketing, as in many younger disciplines – including the conference industry itself – terms and terminology are still somewhat loose and imprecise.

Even the word ‘market’ is open to different interpretations. In marketing terms, the term ‘market’ is used as a collective noun for those customers who buy, or who are likely to buy, a particular product or service. Hence, for example, we can speak about ‘the Japanese market for digital cameras’, ‘the over-60s market for private health care’ or ‘the trade association market for conferences’. However, in the field of economics, the definition of ‘market’ is much broader, and it is understood to mean a system encompassing the principal buyers and suppliers of a particular product or service, as well as those intermediaries whose role it is to facilitate the purchasing process between buyers and suppliers.

The stakeholders in the conference market will now be reviewed, but first, it is important to clarify what is meant by the term ‘product’ as it is applied in this market.

The product

For the sake of convenience, the word ‘product’ will be used in this book to indicate the services and facilities that are being marketed by a venue or by a destination. In the case of a conference centre, for example, the product is the amalgam of all of the tangible and intangible elements that contribute towards the success of conferences held there: the centre’s location, its meetings rooms, audio-visual facilities, catering services, the staff’s professional knowledge and their courtesy towards delegates and so on.

In the case of a destination, the composite product that is marketed is also composed of tangible and intangible elements. The tangibles comprise not only all of the meetings venues and accommodation services operating within the destination but also the other suppliers of services, such as local restaurants, shops, tourist attractions and transport operators, all of which may be used by conference organisers and delegates during the event. Important intangibles, for a destination, include its image and its atmosphere, both of which can be crucial factors in determining whether a particular destination is selected for a conference.

Clearly, one key difference between the venue product and the destination product is that those responsible for marketing venues (the marketing department of a particular conference hotel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Series Preface
• Preface
• 1. The role of marketing and selling in the convention and business events sector
• 2. Marketing planning for destinations and venues
• 3. Non-personal marketing communications for destinations and venues: principles and practice
• 4. Personal marketing communications for destinations and venues: principles and practice
• 5. Sales strategies for destinations and venues: principles and practice
• 6. The marketing environment for destination marketing organisations
• 7. The marketing environment for venues
• 8. Building effective marketing partnerships
• 9. Current initiatives in the conferences, conventions and business events sector
• Appendix A: The main meetings industry exhibitions
• Index