Search results

With the global adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), it has become increasingly important for educators to develop a responsive curriculum where future event practitioners understand, value and implement sustainability as a core component of meeting and event management. The purpose of this paper is to explore the viewpoints of industry to embed sustainability as part of developing a Meeting and Event Management curriculum that is responsive to industry needs, and in so doing, contribute to quality education (SDG4).

Qualitative data were generated from 10 key informant interviews amongst top-level meeting and event professionals. Open questions elucidated industry viewpoints to develop content for a Meeting and Event Management curriculum at Advanced Diploma level in South Africa. Content analysis and data interpretation revealed key topics that guided the embedment of SDGs in the curriculum as knowledge, skills, values and attitudes.

Curriculum content was linked to six specific, corresponding SDGs, namely: good health and well-being; quality education; decent work and economic growth; industry, innovation and infrastructure; climate action and partnerships for the goals.

The paper contributes valuable industry insights into academic educators concerned with responsive curriculum development in the field of meeting and event management by outlining how SDGs can be integrated as competencies and learning outcomes in a tertiary qualification.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which price competitiveness accounts for the observed precipitated decline in the number of meetings taking place in Macau from 2009 to 2012, in spite of the rapid growth in overall tourism, diversification in its tourism offering, and the sizable expansion of its capacity and facilities for hosting business tourism over the same period.

Analyzing historical as well as comparative data in a cross-section analytic design, the study suggests an implied competitive price range (using comparative accommodation prices as a proxy) beyond which financial incentives may be ineffectual in attracting meetings

Examination of price levels as a proxy of competitiveness in attracting meeting events in the single case of Macau proved inconclusive. Other factors beyond mere price competitiveness likely account for the declining number of meetings in Macau from 2009 to the end of 2012.

Overall, the above findings pose a challenge for the continued general development of MICE industry in Macau and its meetings industry in particular. Despite the noble and generous efforts of its government agencies to arrest the decline in the number of meetings and maintain Macau’s position as a meetings industry hub through monetary incentives and subvention packages for organizers, it would benefit them and the private sector to explore channeling more resources toward addressing the fundamental and structural factors that can improve long-term competitiveness in attracting more meeting events.

This study seeks to determine factors that encourage post‐meeting work activity in a software development group by assessing attendee diversity (functional, staffing and tenure), meeting size, and meeting history.

One year's worth of meeting data from a software development group in a US‐based financial services company were collected and analyzed. A binary logistic regression analysis was utilized to determine the impact of diversity, meeting size, and meeting history on the likelihood of post‐meeting work activity.

Tenure diversity and meeting history for each meeting event significantly contribute to the likelihood of post‐meeting work activity.

A lack of variance in the data does not allow for the examination of staffing diversity. Further, generalizability of findings is limited since data come entirely from one organization. Findings suggest that meeting characteristics, specifically tenure diversity and meeting history, can improve the likelihood of post‐meeting work activity occurring.

Findings illustrate that management can leverage tenure diversity and meeting history within a software development group to encourage post‐meeting work activity.

All organizations employ meetings, and research that clarifies how to extract maximum value from meeting events is critical. This study provides a first step in uncovering specific meeting characteristics which are most likely to impact post‐meeting work activity.

This study aims to explore virtual site visit adoption patterns of US convention facilities based on the diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory. Additionally, it offers predictive models of virtual site visit tool adoption by applying probability distributions.

The study used content analysis of 369 US convention facility websites. Data collected from the websites recorded the presence or absence of the following tools facilitating virtual site visits: photos, floor plans, videos, 360-photos, 360-tours and virtual reality (VR)-optimized tours. The website content analysis was followed by application of the DOI theory and predictive modeling.

According to the DOI theory, the use of VR-optimized tours (4.34%) is still in the early adoption stage, followed by 360-degree tours (12.74%) and standard videos (17.89%) that have transitioned into the early majority stage of adoption and photos (72.09%) and floor plans (84.82%) that represent a late majority stage. Three predictive models with shifted Gompertz, Gumbel and Bass distributions forecasted that convention centers would achieve a 50% adoption rate of 360-degree tools (photos and tours) in 4.67, 4.2 and three years, respectively. The same models predicted a 50% adoption rate of 360-degree tours in 6.62, 5.81 and 4.42 years.

The research indicates that most US convention facilities have not taken full advantage of their websites as a sales and marketing tool.

This study is the first comprehensive attempt to evaluate the adoption rate of VR and other technologies enabling virtual site visits by using content analysis of US convention facility websites. Additionally, it is the first attempt to apply probability distributions to predict technology adoption in the convention industry context.

Hosting business events is no longer the preserve of hotels and purpose-built conference and exhibition centres. Today, visitor attractions, theatres, museums, universities and sporting complexes also compete for their share of the lucrative business events sector. However, few of these venues were originally designed and built to accommodate events but are now multipurpose in function and marketed to the events industry to secure a secondary source of income. This paper aims to evaluate the supply and design of venues for business events from both a historical and contemporary viewpoint.

As business events have specific venue requirements, ranging from extensive, accessible space for exhibitions to numerous rooms for plenary and syndicate conference sessions, choosing an appropriate venue from those available has become a considerable task. A review of key moments in history demonstrates how different types of venues have emerged and developed.

This study reveals how venues that have a similar background typically share features such as architectural design and layout. The paper discusses the characteristics of unusual, academic and sporting venues as well as hotels and purpose-built space to include factors such as availability, cost and location.

This paper provides an insight into the benefits and drawbacks of using different types of venues for business events and the advantages and challenges that these present to organisers. Case studies are embedded within this paper, illustrating the range of venues that are used to successfully host business events today. As there is limited literature that explores venue development for events, or commonalities of venue characteristics by type, the synthesis of these two important elements of event management makes this study an original and valuable contribution to the developing literature.

The purpose of this study is three fold: to provide a preliminary exploration of meeting planners' use and perceived usefulness of the different types of social media; to examine why meeting planners use social media and; to investigate the perception of adopting the social media, especially as perceived critical mass impacts the adoption of social networking media.

Data were collected from the members of a professional association for meeting professionals in the Southwest US using an online self‐administered questionnaire. A total of 510 members received an invitation to take the survey and 120 responses were received, representing a 23.5 percent response rate. Descriptive analysis, discriminant validity, reliability and path analysis were used to estimate the relationships between the five constructs: perceived critical mass, usefulness, ease of use, attitudes and intention to use social network media in the future.

The most commonly preferred social network sites were Facebook (29 percent), LinkedIn (15 percent), YouTube (13 percent), Twitters (11 percent) and My Space (11 percent) and the social networking media rated most useful were Facebook (mean=3.7), LinkedIn (mean=3.1), YouTube (mean=3.0), Blogs (mean=2.7), Webinars (mean=2.6) and Twitter (mean=2.5), The top three reasons for using social media were: to communicate with other planners easily and quickly through chat or discussion boards (80.4 percent), to share queries, problems, solutions and opinions with other meeting planners (70.1 percent) and to get feedback from attendees after meeting/event/convention (69.9 percent). Additionally, the path model used in the analysis indicated that perceived critical mass not only directly influences intention to use social network media but also indirectly affects attitude toward using social media and intention to use social media simultaneously through perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness.

Even though the social networking media has previously been used by many meeting planners to find information, few research studies have explored the meeting planners' perception of social networking media and what factors may have an effect on meeting planners' adoption of using social network media. This study provides a preliminary empirical analysis of meeting planners' perception of these tools and the factors that influence their utilization.

Scholars have long argued that churches play a critical role in mobilizing communities marginal to the political process, primarily by pooling resources, disseminating information, and providing opportunities for members to develop community networks, leadership, and civic skills. However, recent research suggests that churches only serve as effective mobilizing institutions when they engage in direct political discussion and recruitment. Even so, churches may face economic, legal, and institutional barriers to entering the political sphere, and explicit political speech and action remain rare. Through an analysis of two years of ethnographic fieldwork following faith-based community organizers attempting to recruit Spanish speakers throughout a Catholic Archdiocese into a campaign for immigrant rights, this paper explores the institutional constraints on church political mobilization, and how these are overcome to mobilize one of the most politically marginal groups in the United States today: Hispanic undocumented immigrants and their allies. I argue that scholars of political engagement must look beyond the structural features of organizations to consider the effects of their institutionalized domains and practices. While churches do face institutional barriers to political mobilization, activists who specialize their recruitment strategy to match the institutional practices of the organizations they target can effectively overcome these barriers to mobilize politically alienated populations.

Bidding, planning, design, and management are principles of successful conference execution. In this chapter, an appreciation of context and the specification of concrete guidelines are shared on how to make a conference a success. Micro examples inform the perspectives on how to apply event domain literature in the management of an academic association conference. Practical viewpoints, including strategic planning guidelines, operational documents, and event design philosophies shed light on professional conference management. Key success factors and challenges related to its design provide a yardstick on how to execute a conference. Key summary issues and special tips for success are also highlighted.

Corporate meetings are a large sector of the global meetings, incentive, convention and exhibition (MICE) industry. However, regular attendance and productive participation by employees are regularly cited as critical problem areas. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how key inhibiting factors related to meeting attendance influence one dimension of employee organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB)–civic loyalty.

An online survey was administered to 229 attendees of corporate meetings, drawn from a large range of private companies and government agencies. Regression analysis was used to investigate which factors affected two variables reflecting employee OCB–civic loyalty: future attendance intentions and positive co-worker advocacy.

It was found that opportunity costs and travel convenience were the two most important factors. Opportunity costs reflected the personal costs faced by attendees attending corporate meetings offsite through family or work-related responsibilities. In addition, organizational support was a further significant factor. The strength of relationships varied depending upon gender and mode of transport to the destination.

While there is a large literature on motivators of meeting attendance in general, this is the first study to examine attendance factors for the corporate meeting sector. This study addresses calls for studies that seek to understand which key factors are related to positive attendance outcomes, and especially extends the scant level of research on meeting inhibitors. This study is also the first to utilize organizational citizenship theory to understand these relationships within the MICE sector. Implications are drawn for event organizers.

Events, conventions and other meetings are one of the fastest growing sectors within the tourism industry. For many destinations events provide a large number of tourists and a high public exposure through an extensive media coverage. This paper draws its focus on the image of an event and its influence on the image of a destination. The results show that an event has an influence on a traveller's image of the destination, most notably for travellers living close to the destination. It is also shown that the image of those travellers who have a prior experience with the destination are less affected by the event. The results can be used by destination managers to improve the image benefit of events through a better selection of events and to improve the competitive position of the destination by a selective communication of the positive aspects of the event to particular target groups.