Abstract
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the divergence between the tasks and roles of convention bureaux (CB) in North America and Europe.Design/methodology/approachA survey among 55 CB’ managers was conducted. A total of 75% of respondents represented institutions operating in European cities, 25% – in North American ones. This research mainly focused on managers’ opinions about the importance of tasks and roles performed by CB and the degree to which the institutions manage to fulfil them. Therefore, importance-performance analysis was used in the study.FindingsCB in North America and Europe broadly differ as to the characteristics of both groups of institutions. They include their time of operation, number of employees, annual budget and types of events that CB try to attract to the cities that they represent. There are no such differences when it comes to the importance and performance of institutions’ tasks and roles. The way in which managers evaluate them is quite similar because the respondents pay the closest attention to the roles of a marketer and an agent of a city played by a convention bureau. Differences lie in the meaning assigned by managers to the particular tasks of surveyed institutions.Originality/valueThe survey was carried out on a relatively small sample dominated by European institutions. However, the study attempts at investigating the roles and tasks of CB, with only few previous studies on this topic, including the ones comparing CB’ activity in different countries or on different continents. Moreover, proposed recommendations might be useful for a large group of managers and do not have to be limited only to institutions from Europe and North America.
Highlights
Business tourism is an important topic in scientific literature; not enough attention is paid to convention bureaux (CB)
Research primarily investigated on CB’ tasks and roles in cities and local meetings industries
This paper contributes to the scientific literature on the roles of CB by identifying differences between organisations in North America and Europe
Summary
Business tourism is an important topic in scientific literature; not enough attention is paid to convention bureaux (CB). The Scopus database has almost 40 scientific papers on CB [1]. Most of them deal with a particular activity of these institutions like online marketing, especially the performance of CB’ websites (Cobos et al, 2009; Davidson and Keup, 2014; Feng et al, 2004; Ha and Love, 2005; Harrill and Stringam, 2008; Stepchenkova et al, 2010; Xiang et al, 2010) or overall use of information technologies (Yuan et al, 2006). There are only few papers considering CB activity in a more complex way (Getz et al, 1998; Morrison et al, 1998; Wang and Fesenmaier, 2007) and even fewer studies compare CB’s operation in different countries or regions (Palmer and Bejou, 1995). There are relatively not many investigations referring to CB, their analysis proves that it is hard to have a homogeneous point of view on these institutions
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