When The New Normal Is Not That New, Why Not Follow? Optimising e-Tourism and e-Marketplaces for Business Events

Abstract

The current study addressed two concerns about the effects of movement restrictions on business events: (1) how to continue with business events while face-to-face events are preferable but not always possible; and (2) how to maintain business events' market share post-pandemic. While the business events market remains niche, its promotion is consistently limited to a few methods that make no distinction between pre-and post-pandemic. It is assumed that new methods of promoting business events will be required at least intra-pandemic to capture several new norms. Therefore, an extensive literature review was conducted. The analysis disclosed the potential for introducing virtual reality into the e-tourism industry as a whole, with the capacity to serve at least four tourism markets: leisure, educational, events (MICE), and healthcare and wellness tourism. These markets were emphasised in light of the "new experience society" that events in the tourism industry are increasingly important in providing something artificial, transient, and unique in addition to the ongoing, long-term tourism products based on the past research outcomes. Additionally, website content analysis was performed to investigate the normality and potential of e-marketplace optimisation for e-tourism. The normalisation analysis was conducted based on the search results of the top 5 e-marketplaces in Malaysia, and the results supported the inference of abnormal distribution using these platforms. Another finding of market potential has lent credence to the existing idea through a firm's initiatives to sell on existing e-marketplaces with proven consumer support. To capture the market opportunities, the e-tourism normalisation model was introduced.