Convention Tourism Assignment 1

Essay Question
The conventions and meetings industry has unlimited growth potential. It will bring substantial returns on investment. Therefore, all destinations should actively promote conventions and meetings.

Program MSC HTM 524: Convention Tourism
Instructor Name: Dr. Karin Weber
Student Name: XIAO Xiang (Sean) 13117714g

Recently, the global convention industry is showing consistently developing trend and growing potential. Based on the research done by the World Tourism Organization (WTO, 2006), it shows that the number of participators at convention including exhibitors and delegates are
For example, Seoul has become one of the hottest travel destinations after hosting the Olympic Games in 1988 and the FIFA World Cup in 2002. The city shows its attractiveness and makes the people around the world more familiar and curious about it. Recently, Seoul even becomes one of the top convention destinations around the world. Convention industry is being one of the main supporting industries in this city currently. (Kim, 2003)It is a very successful sample that a city promotes meetings and events and gets significant benefit by it.
Moreover, not only economic contribution but some non-economic contributions affect the convention destinations as well. Culture exchange and promoting environmental friendly activities are the two main non-economic contributions for a destination to promote events and meetings. For example, the Shanghai Expo has been successfully held in 2010, attracting 73 million people from 246 countries and international organizations, providing a huge platform for people around the world to exchange the culture from their own countries, presenting the Chinese culture to the world, contributing to globalization.(Expo 2010 Shanghai China,2010) After the expo, the left event venue building has turned to be culture museum for visitors as some attractiveness. For the environmental friendly promoting, convention industry also makes a lot of contribution.