21 January 2015
Session "Destination Marketing. Business Tourism. Two Components of Success" attracted much interest of experts on the first day of the 4th Europe + Asia Event Forum.
Dmitri Gavra, Chair of Public Relations at the Graduate School of Journalism and Mass Communications, St-Petersburg State University, Helen Lloyd, General Director, TMI Consultancy (London, Great Britain), Vladislav Shulaev, Director of Territorial Promotion at AGT Communication Agency, David Benitez, Founder of Content Cocktails (London, Great Britain), and other experts took part in it. The session participants discussed peculiarities of business tourism both in Russia and abroad.
According to the industry experts' opinion the following may be underlined among principal aims of destination marketing: attraction of investments to the region, promotion of products and services produced in the region, expansion of regional participation in implementation of international, state and regional programmes.
Helen Lloyd, General Director at TMI Consultancy, shared her vision of the difference between business tourism and conventional tourism.
"Conventional tourism is just travelling. Activities are rather emotional, a person is guided by criteria of interest and comfort. First of all, there is a rational and logical approach, evaluation of opportunities in business tourism. The popular destinations for business tourism today are Dubai and Singapore. These are already well-known brands of business tourism," she said.
Helen Lloyd pointed out three foreign market players as an example of such companies that are successfully working to increase destination attractiveness: London&Partners, Marca Espana and Copenhagen Convention Bureu.
