Business Tourism
ATLAS Special Interest Group
Business Tourism
The Coordinator of this SIG is:
Rob Davidson – MICE Knowledge, United Kinddom
The ATLAS SIG Business Tourism has been active since 2004. Our members are academics who are teaching and researching subjects such as conference management, venue and destination management, business events, or business tourism destination marketing. We also count among our members a number of business tourism practitioners with a professional interest in research in this domain. The Business Tourism SIG acts as a useful forum for the sharing of information and best practice in teaching and researching these subjects. Much of this sharing takes place during our annual Business Tourism Conference which throughout the years since the inception of our SIG has become the most important international annual academic forum for the exchange of ideas and knowledge in this field. The conference takes place each year in a university represented by one or more of our members, and all members are free to propose their facility as a venue for forthcoming conferences. We welcome business tourism industry professionals to participate in this event as speakers or observers, and one day or half-day of the conference is usually hosted by a major conference venue in the city in which the host university is located. Presentations from the conference may be offered for publication in specialist journals such as the Journal of Convention and Event Tourism. In the past, conference papers have also been published in special editions of the ATLAS Advances in Business Tourism Research series.
If you want to contact the SIG coordinator, please fill in the form HERE
If you want to join this SIG, please fill in the form HERE
Annual review of activities 2024
The highlight of the year for our SIG was our annual conference, which was led in Amsterdam from 15-17 November 2023. This event is our main forum for the sharing of information and best practice in teaching and researching business tourism subjects, and, with very few exceptions, it has been held each year ever since the SIG was created in 2004. This was our first face-to-face conference since the end of the Covid pandemic, and our hosts were the staff and students of MBO College Centrum, located in the historic heart of the city. Conference and events management is taught as an elective subject at this institution, which also has its own Events Planning department. Much of the design and logistical planning of the SIG conference was undertaken by the students of MBO College Centrum, who were also present throughout the event. The conference attracted participants from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Serbia and Spain.
The 2023 conference was characterized by a number of innovations:
- The Amsterdam Convention Bureau kindly sponsored five students to attend the event, at €500 euros per student. They were selected from a list of applicants, all of whom had chosen a business tourism-related subject as the topic for their Masters dissertations.
- On Day One of the conference, a special event for students from universities in the Benelux countries ran in parallel to the main conference, with speakers from the business tourism industry and a competition in which a team from each university designed a conference and presented their ideas to the audience. The winning team were from Thomas More University in Mechelen, Belgium.
- All conference participants enjoyed a guided tour of one of Amsterdam’s principal events venues, the Beurs van Berlage. We were shown around by staff from the venue, who explained how this historic building is marketed for business events.
A total of 14 papers were presented at the conference, which included a keynote speech by Dr Dusan Borovcanin, Vice Dean of Singidunum University in Belgrade, who explained how his country won the bid to host the 2027 World Expo and how this major event is set to change the international image of Serbia as a business tourism destination.
Our 2024 Business Tourism SIG conference will be held at the Universidad Europea de Valencia, in Spain, from 25-27 November, where our host will be Dr María Sánchez de Mora Vidal. All ATLAS members and non-ATLAS members are welcome to attend.