Conference attendees' satisfaction: Evidence from Belgrade (Serbia)

Abstract

Conference industry brings significant economic effects and that is one of the reasons why many destinations around the world strive to organize conferences, especially the international ones, which make bigger economic effects. According to the Strategy of tourism development of the Republic of Serbia (2005-2015), city break and business tourism are tourism products of high priority, which can provide short-term positioning of Novi Sad and Belgrade, at the first place, at the international tourism market, and contribute to the growth of tourism turnover of foreign travellers. Belgrade is the capital and the largest city in Serbia. It is very well equipped with necessary infrastructure for organizing business events such as conferences, congresses, meetings etc. Lately, the number of international business events in Serbia is increasing and the majority of those events are organized in Belgrade. However, there are very few surveys which are examining satisfaction of the conference attendees in Serbia. This topic is often ignored despite the fact that the attendees satisfaction is substantial for organizers and all other relevant stakeholders at host destination. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyze the satisfaction of the conference attendees, as they are final consumers of conference tourist product and their experience regarding both conference and host destination is thus essential to destination marketing and management organizations, conference centres, hotel managers, meeting planners and all other stakeholders involved in conference industry and tourism.