Factors affecting conference participation decision-making

Abstract

Business travel, as the sector with the fastest growth in the tourism industry globally, has received increased attention from both countries and cities, particularly from emerging destinations. In developing economies, business travel, including attending meetings, conferences, incentives and other business events, often plays a leading role in the growth of the wider travel and tourism sector. Therefore, tourism authorities and convention bureaus at the national and city levels have been struggling to attract international conferences and a larger number of participants to conferences. Understanding factors, which appear to be important in the conference participation decision-making process, can help conference organizers and destinations to attract more participants and thus gain more benefit from this growing sector of the tourism industry. Therefore, this study aims to examine factors affecting the conference participation decision-making from the academics' perspective. Furthermore, it investigates how different socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents influence the extracted factors of the conference participation decision-making process. The data was collected from the academics employed at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia. The findings reveal six dimensions of conference participation decision-making: destination stimuli, costs and destination accessibility, educational and professional opportunities, intervening opportunities, location factors, and conference factors. The results also show that there are statistically significant differences in some extracted factors between respondents of different gender, age, education level, and academic position, while the frequency of participation in international conferences does not influence the factors. The results could be of interest to all stakeholders in the business travel and tourism industry.

Predicting the determinants of academic conference participation decision-making in the post-pandemic situation: the case of Indonesia

“…Previous studies have shown that conference factors significantly influence the decision to participate in a conference (Oppermann and Chon, 1997;Zhang et al, 2007;Pavlukovi c and Cimbaljevi c, 2020;Malek et al, 2011). Conference factors were ranked as one of the most significant motivations of conference participation (Malek et al, 2011).…”

Determining success factors for business tourism destinations: Evidence from Zlatibor (Serbia)

“…In Serbia, there is little research about business tourism in general and specifically the attractiveness of destinations and success factors that influence the decision-making process of meeting planners. Several previous studies addressed the conference attendees' satisfaction in Serbia (Dragićević et al, 2010;Dragićević et al, 2011;Dunjić et al, 2012), business tourism destination competitiveness (Dragićević et al, 2012), factors affecting conference participation decision-making from the academics' perspective (Pavluković, Cimbaljević, 2020). Moreover, there is a lack of research on Zlatibor as a business tourism destination.…”

“…Business tourism is deemed an important and fast-growing sector in the global tourism market (United Nations World Tourism Organization [UNWTO] & European Travel Commission [ETC], 2015;World Travel & Tourism Council, 2017;Pavluković, Cimbaljević, 2020). It has been considered as one of the most desirable forms of tourism development at destinations worldwide, as the spending of organizers and participants on business events related services (e.g., meeting facilities, accommodation, catering, transportation) and on tourism activities (e.g., dining, shopping, leisure, tours) contributes to the economic growth of host destinations (Han, Hwang, 2017;Han et al, 2019).…”

Sustainability in the Meetings Industry

“…Destinations around the world have recognised the numerous benefits of hosting meetings and other events (Han and Hwang, 2017). In particular, emerging destinations have made significant capital investments in developing the infrastructure necessary for the meetings industry (Presbury and Edwards, 2005;Pavluković and Cimbaljević, 2020). Consequently, competition between destinations has become vigorous (Beardsley et al, 2019;UNWTO and ETC, 2015).…”

“…The meetings industry is an important and fast-growing sector of the global tourism industry (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2017;Han et al, 2019;Pavluković and Cimbaljević, 2020). Sometimes referred to as the "MICE" sector or business tourism, it is traditionally composed of four components -association conventions and congresses, corporate meetings, incentives and exhibitions, although this has also been widened to include networking events and hybrid forms of corporate events (Bladen et al, 2017).…”