Business Tourism: Theories and Economic Values

Résumé du document

A congress at the seaside, a trade show in a historical monument building, a meeting close to a golf course, a party in a prestigious Parisian night club, a seminar in a ski resort, many different possibilities are open to motivate, to train or to boost a team. According to the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau - the PCVB - (2008: 30), a tourist is "a visitor spending at least one night and no more than one year in collective or private accommodation other than his or her usual environment". Therefore, tourism includes "the whole activities developed by tourists during their trips outside their accustomed environment" adds Loridon (2006: 2). According to Plasait (2007: 9), putting together the two words "tourism" and "business" could initially appear inappropriate. The first one refers to holidays, leisure, relaxation, recreation; whereas the second one mentions a different reality: business, wealth and job creations. Nevertheless, these two words have some common points because both of them refer to a need (travelling) and the choice of the same services of transportation, accommodation, catering. What makes the difference is the objective of the trip: leisure or professional.

Extraits

[...] Available from: http://www.conseil-economique-et- social.fr/ces_dat2/2-3based/base.htm Py, P Tourism. An economic phenomenon Paris : La Documentation Française. Rosenthal, B Bedouk annual barometer: business tourism and buying behaviours of companies in 2006. Paris: Bedouk meetings and event media. Sèze, B Business Tourism overview. France: Minister of Tourism. [...]

[...] It gathers a small number of internal employees. Its purpose is to study precise management dilemmas via team works, under the supervision of one leader. Loridon (2006: completes this definition by saying that the main objective of a seminar is to train a team in a closed place. It can be open if participants come from different companies in the same line of business or closed if colleagues of the same company meet together (Loridon 2006: 4). Seminars represent an opportunity to think about a problem, to train, to take decisions or to adjust one specific element of the strategy. [...]

[...] Business tourism should be taken into account as “creation of wealth” for tourism. According to the PCVB (2006: thanks to indirect spin-offs, this market - business travel - generates profits for companies of the tourism industry. For Sèze (2002: the whole experts of the market accept the imprecise definition of “business tourism”, both on national and global scale. Nevertheless, business tourism can be divided in several events regarding to different objectives and targets (Loridon 2006: 3). It is relevant to define each event in order to understand its characteristics. [...]

[...] First of all, it is relevant to differentiate business tourism and corporate travel. According to Dupuy (2005: business tourism represents particular industry of travel, most of the time tourism, realised in order to stimulate, to develop, to motivate, to supervise, to create businesses and to communicate”. According to him, corporate travel is different: it is short stay that a businessman does, most of the time individually, for professional purposes”. All in all, business tourism gathers together individual or collective travel for business purposes, whose duration is equals to more than 24 hours (Sèze 2002: 1). [...]

[...] Who decide in companies regarding corporate events? Generally, this task is assigned to the sales direction. However, marketing and communication departments can also take these decisions. What are the objectives of the firm? Why does this organization want to organise this event? What will be the advantages? Is the organisation the best to achieve this goal? According to a survey made by Loridon (2006: objectives can be different and can be classified as follow: 1. Increase of the overall sales volume; 2. [...]