Geoff Donaghy says new research from AIPC clarifies opportunities as well as some misconceptions among those living near convention centres
Recent research carried out by AIPC has clearly put into focus a number of the key questions around how local residents regard meetings delegates relative to leisure tourists, at a time when many cities are grappling with the impacts of growing numbers of visitors. At the same time, it has created a template for action by identifying misconceptions along with opportunities for centre communications.
The work was initially carried out in Barcelona, Amsterdam and Berlin, with Sydney later added to incorporate a sample from a control destination where tourism impacts were not identified as a local issue. Results across all destinations were remarkably similar and both benefits and concerns largely consistent.
Key findings were as follows:
• Visitor impacts were not a particularly big issue among the broad cross-section of residents, suggesting these concerns were limited to a vocal minority and based on individual issues.
• However, the benefits associated with delegates were distinctly different, with leisure visitors associated almost entirely with spending-based benefits while those participating in meetings being seen to contribute to knowledge, business development, professional practices and other areas of broader benefit.
• At the same time, delegates were significantly less likely to be associated with negative behaviours such as crowding and congestion, theft and vandalism, the environmental burden and disorderly behaviour.
• Respondents were twice as likely to believe new investment to attract more visitors to their destination should be directed toward the meetings and conventions area rather than leisure.
But, at the same time, there were some major misconceptions that blunted the generally beneficial message these kinds of results suggest. The first was that while respondents felt that centres and the events they host created those broader output benefits, very few were clear as to what these were. It is clear that there’s a lot of work to be done in delivering information about such events to underline just what it is they leave behind in our communities.
The second is even more important: with regard to the economic benefits associated with visitor spending, residents of all the surveyed communities had it completely backwards, believing that leisure visitors had higher levels of spending than delegates, when in fact most studies have shown that per diem spending by delegates in most parts of the world where this has been looked at is at least 200-300% higher than for other types of visitors. This is a huge lost opportunity in the battle for community attention, and one that could be easily addressed by making sure economic impact information is credible and up to date and then using it more effectively.
While the results are important to centres, they apply to everyone in the meetings industry because they go to the heart of industry image in a time when everyone is competing for attention and resources. In a way, they create the basis for a better communications initiative – and a clear picture of what those communications should be saying.
