Business Tourists: planners and endusers

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Business Tourists planners and end-users

• Szilvia Gyimóthy
• Department of Service Management
• Lund University

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Menu for today

• The meeings market main players and segments
• Actual trends and challenges
• Research on collaborative networks (case study
  Vienna, Copenhagen)
• Accommodating the individual business traveller
  (midmarket hotels)

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5 competitive forces in the meetings industry
(After Porter 1980)
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Main market segments

• Individual business traveller
• Corporate meetings
• Associations (congresses, conferences)
• Political summits
• Incentives
• Exhibitions and Fairs
• Main season March- June Sept-Novemer

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Meetings Suppliers

• A complex network of interdependent actors
  (convention bureaus, conference venues and
  organisers, tour operators, airlines, hotels,
  destination organisations and communities)
  working together to promote the destination as a
  meeting experience
• Long-term planning horizon
• Long-term collaboration with customers and city
  administration

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The Convention Visitor Bureau spider in the
destination network

• Visibility One destination, one call, coherent
  promotion (usually in collaboration with the
  tourism board)
• Distributor forwards leads, manages city
  capacity, follows up offers from suppliers
• Consultant prepares biddings of larger events
  and stands by under the entire process
• Strategic partner in destination development

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PCO Professional Conference Organiser

• Takes over from the CVB after the bid is settled
• Prepares programme in collaboration with
  customer, inclusive
• Air transport and transfer
• Hotel bookings
• Catering, special events
• Communication material
• Billing, payment
• Diversified services focus on both form and
  content
• Higher bargaining power than end consumer

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Managerial challenges for CVBs

• Balancing conflicting stakeholders interest in a
  fragmented network (Wilkinson March 2008)
• Bridging the gap between the bureaucratic culture
  of public administration and the marketing
  culture adopted by private tourism firms (Palmer
  1996)
• Undertaking a regional coordinating role in spite
  of limited ownership, budget or power to control
  how individual firms deliver (Hartl 2003)
• Stakeholders simultaneous multiple membership in
  competing professional groupings, associations or
  chains (Gyimóthy 2005)

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Current Trends in the Nordic Meetings Industry

• Arena boom
• Formalisation of supply side (9 ICCAS-certified
  CVB)
• Lobby for national Convention Bureaus
• Consolidation of PCOs (mergers and takeovers)
• Collaborative regional development DMC-CVB
  networks
• Joint meetings event development
• Service innovations (Meeting Designers,
  technological developments)
• Uneven business growth (between 6-8 to -2-3)
• (Meetings International Trend 2008,

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Case study design

• To describe the collaborative logics of meetings
  destinations
• To analyse dynamics of interaction, power
  negotiations and conflicts among main actors in
  the collaborative network.
• To identify key success factors in the building
  of collaborative networks in the meetings
  industry
• In-depth interviews of main stakeholders (city
  administration, DMO, CVB, hotels) in Copenhagen,
  Göteborg, and Vienna
• Document analysis of annual reports, press
  releases

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Collaboration in tourism

• Network analysis as new organisational paradigm
• Not only a metaphor, but analytical framework
  (mapping structure, density, social distance,
  cliques)
• Survival often depends on collective action
  collaboration through information exchange,
  shared resources, joint activities (Dollinger
  1990)
• Networks are supported by social capital (trust,
  communication, time spent together) Grangsjö 2003
• Governance networks often emerge from informal
  social systems (Dredge 2001). These are
  self-regulated, based on a common purpose
• May lead to conformity/assimilation of identity
  of members (Glover Hemingway 2005)

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Vienna Convention Bureau

• Vienna is a village. You know your key players
  personally and there is no physical distance
  (Hofburg Congress Centre)
• The people at the CVB are professional guys.
  They give us the big leads for congresses
  attracting 25.000 delegates. (Mariott Hotel,
  General Manager)
• Mainly we compete with other cities. The big
  issue is whether or not the event comes to
  Vienna, rather than which congress centre
  receives the booking. We are all in the same
  boat. (Vienna, Fair Ground Ried)
• Vienna Airport is the most unfriendly airport in
  the world. They wont even set up a sign Welcome
  in Vienna unless we pay (CVB, deputy director)

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Meeting Place Copenhagen

• In Denmark there was a tradition for that the
  large chains set the agenda on the hotel market
  and put pressure on the DMC (MPC network
  consultant)
• Sometimes it is not the cause that really
  determines initial support, but whether or not
  you are a good communicator. The hotels must
  trust you and believe that the network would
  bring more business to them (First director of
  MPC secretariat)
• It must be driven by the private actors If it
  is managed by the public administrators, it will
  become too bureaucratic. (marketing director at
  Radisson, initiator)
• Today, the distance between the hotels and the
  secretariat is growing. It has become a political
  project for WOCO.

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Key success factors

• Hub features (financial, political, industrial,
  administrative or transport centre)
• Touristic brand, history and atmosphere of
  destination
• Venues capacity and flexibility
• Transport and hotel infrastructure a compact
  city that works
• Safety, neutrality
• Stability and continuity at the CVB results in
  legitimacy and loyalty
• Density of social network facilitates resource
  mobilisation and political processes

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Collaborative network dynamics

• Three evolutionary phases
• 1. Entrepreneurial development, kick-started by a
  trusted actor
• 2. Subsidised operations institutionalisation,
  seamless PP-partnership organisation, based on
  consensus
• 3. Consolidation stationary best practice,
  gradually shaking off the flexible, adaptive
  practices

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Actual challenges

• Technological advances and economic recession
  affects the corporate meetings market
  (videoconferences, webinars)
• Recent excessive capacity development resulted in
  increased price levels oversupply
• Loyalty and identification with the destination
  is no longer based on a location logic
• International hotel chains focus on
  superoptimising their operations
• It doesnt help to speak from the heart. They
  the international hotel chains are completely
  cold about Copenhagen, if it can better pay off
  to move a convention to St. Petersbourg.

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Dit hjem når du er kørt ud? Commercial
interpretations of home in mid-range hotels
Szilvia Gyimóthy Department of Service
ManagementUniversity of Lund
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Servicescapes through socialconstructivism

• Consumers are semioticians
• Physical evidence and moments of truths are
  socially constructed through cultural meanings,
  norms, values and interpretations
• Consumption enhances social positioning and
  display of status
• Consumers build unique identities by purchasing
  accessories

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Deconstructing servicescapes as sociospaces

• Places are cognitive ordering tools to categorise
  space into dichotomies (my place vs. others
  place, mental places)
• Places are an extensions of peoples identities
  (emotional attachment to certain places)
• Consumers are co-creators of meaning -
  interacting and in dialogue with the servicescape
• Existential need of the mobile class to colonise
  and attach meaningful bonds to places

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Deconstructing the cultural context of hospitality

• Based on religious/moral imperatives on how to
  accommodate strangers
• Private and social hospitality sharing ones
  home, meals and maybe bedroom with implicit
  expectations of return
• Hospitality as social glue

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Commercial hospitality No ordinary service
encounter

• The social ritual of hospitality is performed as
  an economic exchange
• Assymetric no reciprocity assumed, no ownership
  (?)
• BUT Connotations of
• accommodating a
• stranger appear in each
• welcome concept
• (e.g. complimentary gifts)

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The hotel as sociospace

• Commercial servicescapes have a social linking
  value, not only a functional transit
• Interaction among strangers facilitated or
  manipulated by a hotels public arenas
• A bar, lounge, elevator or hotel room encourage
  certain forms of social interaction instead of
  others (norms, rules, value systems integrated to
  these places)

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Hotels as hyperhomes

• Each hotel is a metaphorical commercial landscape
  performing hospitality mythologies and rituals
• Midrange hotels dwell on the mythology of home
• Gestalting a residential feel on commercial
  premises is based on few trite assumptions what
  home is
• Commodification is fluid

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Modern hotels (60ies-80ies)

• A comfortable shelter for the emergent leisure
  class
• Reliable standards
• Functionality and comfort (hot and cold running
  water, ventilation etc.)
• Better than home

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Welcome home, wherever we are (1973)

• And we're just about everywhere. With more than
  400 Ramada Inns all over the country...
• Residential non-places
• Emphasis on a uniform product
• Stardised props

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When youre in a strange place, its good to see
a familiar face

• Hotels as extensions of the home
• Familiarity of (American) culture, standards and
  values
• The best surprise is no surprise

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The room was clean. The TV worked. Everything
worked. Amazing

• Hygiene aspects are differentiators
• "I think there is something beautiful in things
  doing what they are supposed to do..."

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Amenities Wars

• Exclusivity defined through luxurious add-ons
  (slippers, complimentary chocolate or fruit
  baskets, free magazines and pay-channels)
• Home gestalted as restitution sanctuary
• Leisure temples

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Postmodern hotels (90ies)

• Ett hem på vägen Casual homey feeling for the
  frequent traveller
• Exclusivity defined through customisation and
  expressiveness
• Thirdspace a home stripped from domestic chores
  and family

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Make it your home

• More eclectic and residential furnishings
• Mobile furnishings
• Multifunctional rooms
• More storage place
• Celebration of individuality

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A room that works

• Hotels as extensions of the office
• Self-servicing guests (kitchen or galley
  facilities)
• Technical comfort
• Extensive vertical surfaces to spread out work
• The female traveller

• Before, I received bath slippers and candies.
  Now I have a broadband and a real workplace....
  Here you are able to spend your time to work
  absolutely unperturbed in an efficient and
  spacious workplace with broadband. Mer som
  hemma (Accome Hotel Apartments 2004)

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Designhotell that makes you feel at home

• Our unique concept offers exciting Swedish
  architecture and interior design. The
  home-from-home feeling is heightened by the
  tasteful decor, and luxuirious Hästen beds.
  (Hotel Odin, Gothenburg)

• Creative environments
• Trendy style similar to private living spaces

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Homey standard?

• Subtle, mass customised products
• Technical, rather than personal
• Symbolic poverty similar forms and connotations
• Future narrative strategies?

• Hotels in the future wont look alike, nor will
  they function alike (Jim Anhut, brand manager of
  Choice Hotels)