Trends Affecting the Convention Industry in the 21st Century

This article, "Trends affecting the convention industry in the 21st century" deals with the key trends that are expected to shape the convention industry in the United Kingdom and Australia in the next five years. The United Kingdom is a mature convention destination and Australia is a more recent entrant to the global convention and meeting market. These two countries are representative samples. The trends discussed in the article include business, social, technological and political/legal environments, covering nearly every field. The author adopts the Delphi method to address the research problem. The Delphi method is a widely accepted forecasting tool and has been used successfully for thousands of studies, but this technique has disadvantages. It is also important to note that future developments are not always predicted correctly by the consensus of experts.

Experts identified competition as the key trend in the business environment that is likely to impact the U.K. conference market. There is also a strong consensus on the higher expectations of customers and faster communication in the business environment. These situations are very common for a mature convention destination. The expert put forward four broad trends for the Australian convention industry, namely the globalization of business, governments' increased awareness of the economic benefits of the industry, taxation and currency exchange issues. The currency exchange issues showed different impacts in the convention industry between the U.K. and Australia. The value of the currency is seen as a key factor in the ability of convention destinations to compete with overseas destinations, as currency exchange rates affect both the real and perceived cost of conference packages.

For the technology trends, the experts in the U.K. pay more attention to the cost and profit of applications of new technology, while the experts in Australia were concerned with the relationship between new technology applications and traditional face-to-face meetings and conventions.

Both the U.K. and Australian experts perceived rather few social factors that will impact the convention and meeting industry. The experts in the U.K. are optimistic about the outlook of the convention industry because they felt that the continued growth in international travel will facilitate conference attendance, and the proposed changes to the term structure for schools in the U.K. might benefit the convention industry as a whole..

For political trends, government support and the taxation issue have been raised by experts as issues of importance. Moreover, the political stability of the nation becomes a key competitiveness factor. This viewpoint is highly significant for the convention industry because the issue of delegate safety has become very important in the aftermath of the September 11 events.

In the end of the article, the author points out that there are some similar