RESEARCH OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TOURISM: THEORETICAL BASIS AND ANALYTICAL ASPECTS

Abstract

Objective. The objective of the present article is to generalize and analyze the theoretical foundations of international business tourism, as well as to identify and study the basic trends of its development. Methods. To achieve the defined goal, such methods of empirical and theoretical research were used as a literature review, theoretical generalization (to identify, collect and analyze modern studies devoted to various aspects of the development of international business tourism); comparative analysis, comparison (to compare inbound tourism by the purpose of the visit in the world for different studied periods; to compare the inbound flows of international business tourism by different countries of the world; to analyze inbound tourism by business and professional purpose of travel in the countries of the Central /Eastern Europe, identifying common and opposing trends); data visualization (for visualization and grouping of material). Results. The obtained results of the research allowed: 1) to conclude that the volume of business tourism in the world in the comparative years of 2019 and 2021 did not change and was equal to 11% of the total number of trips made; 2) to determine, on the basis of a comparative analysis of selected countries of the world, that there is a significant excess of travel for personal purposes over travel for business and professional purposes in all analyzed countries; 3) prove on the basis of the analysis of inbound tourism by business and professional purpose of travel in the countries of Central/Eastern Europe (according to the classification of UN Tourism) for the period 2016-2022 that the common trend for all analyzed countries, with the exception of Hungary, is a decrease the amount of income for business and professional purposes for the analyzed period; 4) to establish the leading countries of Central/Eastern Europe in terms of the volume of arrivals for business and professional purposes of travel, including Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, and to find out that Ukraine has the smallest number of travelers.