Conferences, exhibitions and tourism

Nowadays, people often talk about MICE tourism, but there is no clear concept about what MICE tourism is. Starting with the relationship between conferences, exhibitions and tourism, this paper analyzes three misunderstandings:

(A) in the convention and exhibition industry, the emphasis on exhibitions, light meetings.

Although people often mention the convention and exhibition industry, in practical work, they all attach importance to exhibitions and ignore meetings. Congtong

From the data point of view, there are too many exhibition data and too few conference data, which shows that the domestic attention to the conference industry is not as high as that of the exhibition industry. The outstanding performance is that professional conference planning and service companies are out of fashion and lack of professional conference organizers (pco).

(b) Confuse exhibitions with tourism.

MICE tourism is only a kind of tourism product form after the organic combination of MICE industry and tourism industry, or it is one of the important ways for tourism enterprises to realize business diversification, and it cannot be called industry. In convention and exhibition developed countries, convention and exhibition industry and tourism are generally managed by convention and exhibition bureau or tourism bureau, while convention and exhibition industry is regarded as an independent industry.

(3) The convention and exhibition industry is a part of tourism, and some experts believe that "the convention and exhibition industry is an important part of urban tourism in the world today". This view has obvious loopholes, because whether the tourism authorities begin to study the role of exhibition activities in tourism or the major tourism enterprises expand their exhibition tourism business one after another, they cannot change the nature of information exchange or product display of exhibition activities, which is essentially different from tourism activities. On the contrary, these phenomena only show the great promotion of convention and exhibition activities to tourism, but China's participation in convention and exhibition activities is far from enough, and its direct performance is the obvious lag of convention and exhibition tourism development. Definition of several basic concepts

The so-called meeting refers to the activities that people exchange information, get together and discuss around a common theme with the same or different purposes. The main stakeholders of the conference are organizers, contractors and participants (sometimes speakers). Their main content is to exchange ideas or information among participants.

The exhibition is an organized gathering of businessmen from different regions, which has a certain scale and is held at a fixed place regularly. According to different exhibition contents, ufi divides exhibitions into three categories, namely comprehensive exhibitions, professional exhibitions and consumer exhibitions. The stakeholders of the exhibition mainly include organizers, contractors, exhibitors and professional visitors, whose main contents are physical display, information exchange and business negotiation between exhibitors and professional visitors.

The so-called tourism refers to the sum of all phenomena and relationships caused by people's travel and stay for peaceful purposes. These people will not settle and work in tourist destinations. The successful completion of a tourism activity mainly depends on three elements, namely, tourists, tourist destinations (tourism resources) and tourism. Its fundamental feature is the off-site mobility of tourists (including off-site consumption), which is very similar to conferences and exhibitions.

From the above analysis, we can draw three conclusions: First, although the term "convention and exhibition industry" is widely used in China at present, there are essential differences between conferences and exhibitions in their main contents and modes of operation; Secondly, conferences, exhibitions and tourism activities are closely related and penetrate each other, but they are by no means simply equal or inclusive; Thirdly, exhibition activities and tourism have a common feature, that is, the mobility of customers in different places, which provides basic conditions for their cooperation in specific operations. Therefore, convention and exhibition industry and tourism can talk about docking or interaction, but they must not be equated.