Good business tourism requires the same commitment to good practice as private tourism but a recent visit to the Scottish Enterprise Business Tourism Conference in Glasgow revealed some of the specific issues of access, pain points and how the right approach can yield dividends.
Well…it’s been one of those typical fortnights that seem to occur around this time of year when your feet just don’t seem to touch the ground on account of the workload. So we’ve got a bit of making up to do in terms of this blog and I thought I would start by giving my impressions of the recent Business Tourism Conference held in Glasgow.
It seems that Business Tourism is often seen as the ‘ugly sister’ of tourism, possibly conjuring up images of exhausted businessmen in motorway hotels. Obviously, the truth is far removed – it’s a fast moving, exciting and multi-billion dollar sector with its own unique set of demands and challenges. It’s difficult to pin-point one overall theme that came out of the conference but I thought I would use this post to touch on some examples of ‘Access’ within business tourism.
What I mean by Access is making it easy for the customer to buy from and use you and the following observations/anecdotes illustrate this point.
“Don’t make it difficult for me!”
Gripes included:
Scotland was identified as lacking in the highest quality establishments for senior level corporate away days. Part of the problem is its lack of air connectivity to important global centres – establishments need to be near good international airports to capture this kind of trade.
Hotel facilities (not just in Scotland) often don’t think through from the guest’s or organizer’s perspective. Allowing the Audio Visual team to set up the day before, making sure that tea and coffee could be had next door to the conference room and not at the other end of the hotel, and making sure the business centre was similarly close were cited as example areas were improvements could be made. In other words, making life smoother for the organizer and guests.
One speaker from a corporate events team noted, “If your website is easy to use, then I’ll pass it on to my guests – why do I need to repeat what it says when it is there so well already.” In other words, good website a) makes it easy for the organizer to make a decision about the suitability of the venue and b) they will act as an evangelist and push your information directly under the noses of valuable guests. The same speaker warned that it was very important to be upfront with them if the hotel was experiencing building works or some such matter – honesty is always preferred to an unpleasant surprise!
Local knowledge is important for a venue – top level business meetings often wish to spend time way from the hotel and so a solid recommendation to a good restaurant (or shops for spouses!) is greatly appreciated. Again, an example of making the experience smoother that it might otherwise be.
Why access makes profound business sense
At the other end of the spectrum, Rick Antonson of Tourism Vancouver observed how pleased Vancouver was to secure the 2010 Paralympics alongside the ‘regular’ Winter Olympics. This is important to Vancouver not only from the point of view of general prestige and income from the Games but also because it means the city’s infrastructure will be geared to allow for access to less able-bodied members of society. And when Western society is graying and a powerful economic segment of consumers becomes less agile, this is going to be vital to ensuring that Vancouver is ahead of the game is making their guests feel as welcome as possible.
Some of these points of course are not just confined to Business Tourism and there were a number of significant contributions in other sessions that I’m going to raise in future posts . . . starting with whether a bed tax is actually a good idea . . .
This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Business Tourism, Conference learnings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.