Tourism Conference: Industry-Based Project

Executive summary

This report has been prepared by Professional Conference Organizers (PCO) to the Australian Asian Tourism Professional Association (AATPA) who are holding a biennial conference. It aims to make the conference succeed.

A conference on Tourism is the most important event to any government, organization, or agency interested in tourism improvement, and therefore they must embrace and use it to have members and staff be trained on new ideas/knowledge which they will apply in tourism management. This is the role that is being played by the AATPA in conjunction with the various organization and colleges teaching tourism. The conference will have teachers, students, government officials, and other tourism stakeholders from Asia and Australia. Teachers are the most important people in the tourism sector as they research new ideas and pass them on to stakeholders. They are the government representatives from the national level to the community level. They preside over, manage and teach future tourism stakeholders and at times help in implementing tourism projects stated Mitchell (2004).

PCO (company) profile

Professional Conference Organizers (PCO) Company is an event organizer which is incorporated in Australia with a website hosted in the same country. It is a unique event and function creating and coordinating enterprise situated in Australia. Areas of special interest consist of supervising, processing, serving customers, forecasting, administration, and planning all aspects pertaining to events, conferences and functions. It has a number of human resources as event coordinators who are responsible for ensuring that all aspects related to events and functions are handled ethically, correctly, and efficiently in a courteous and friendly manner. Professional Conference Organizers offers unique services at affordable prices in Asia and Australia.

This company offers various services which include:

• Dispute resolution, between members and suppliers and suppliers and members.
• Training and Education.
• Individual and Company Accreditation.
• Annual conference with low delegate fees.
• Standard contracts with venues.
• Member services marketing to potential clients and suppliers.
• Marketing of accredited members to industry.
• Options for Business and Event Insurance for members.

Aims & Objectives of the conference

The main of the Conference is promoting the association and to provide an educational update on current research and trends in tourism for its membership and students.

The conference will be guided by the following objectives:

1. To promote tourism activities among members of AATPA.
2. To help members acquire and develop new skills in tourism management and promotion.
3. To inform the members and students of the current research and trends in tourism.
4. To help participants to understand how to successfully manage tourism sceneries in Australia and Asia.
5. To promote environmental sustainability and educate members on how to conserve the environment.

There will an evaluation to determine whether a conference has achieved its objectives. It is usually carried out after some specified time. The organizers should be able to evaluate to determine whether it’s a success or a failure. Evaluation can be carried by organizers or by the external evaluator. Essex and Chalkley (2004) stated that Evaluation is an integral feature of training. In its crudest form, it is the comparison of objectives (criterion behavior) with the effects (terminal behavior) to answer the question of how far the training has achieved its purpose. The setting of the objective and the establishment of methods of measuring results are or should be, an essential part of the training stage of any training program. It is at the planning stage that the basis upon which each category of training is to be evaluated should be determined. At the same time, it is necessary to consider how the information required to evaluate courses should be obtained and analyzed adds Emery (2002).

For short-term evaluation, participants can be requested to make an appointment with their individual immediate supervisor or manager two to three weeks after the training to go over the action plan to assess which elements of it they have already accomplished and where they may be having problems. This system guarantees transfer of learning, but it requires full management support and training as well as commitment. Six months after training, data can be collected. Then it can be compared with data from earlier results. As long as the learning objectives were clear, the effectiveness of the training can be easily gauged argues Chakra, Sills and Cubage (2008).

Planning the conference

The stakeholders will include teachers, academics, industry, government officials, and others associated with tourism in Australia and Asia.

Timetable

The following is a presentation of a timetable for the conference. The timetable will determine the presentation of the objectives of the conference, the timetable will begin with registration and then a welcome note to the members. The conference program consists of 3 days for the conference, plus half a day field trip. AATPA’s social activities are very important and need to include at least a welcome reception, a networking breakfast, and a formal conference dinner. These must be included in the registration fee for full board delegates. A large number of delegates have an interest in art, architecture, and festivals and would be interested in attending with their families if the destination had these attractions.

First day

Day two

Day three

Destination, location, venue, facilities, accommodation, transportation

A venue, location, theme and well-planned program can cause the conference to be a very successful consortium that will cause a roar and will be the talk for a long time. By this happening, the next event that will get to be organized by the same sponsors or even at the same venue will not need a lot of advertisement. People will already want to go with no further pushing. Therefore, for people to attain a good and successful function, they ought to look keenly at all these things.

The destination of the conference shall be held in Sydney because of its well-developed infrastructure as well as the income levels of the residents of the town. Most residents are middle-level income level so it is easier for them to have an extra disposable income to use.

It will be held at the outcast of the city to avoid the participants being affected by the traffic jam. Most members will be booked in hotels near the conference for their accommodation.

All delegates will be picked from the airport and transported to their hotels and this is included in the registration fee.

Audio, visual, information technology

The organization requires equipment in terms of cameras, computers, laptops and LCD projectors, video cameras and recorders. This will enable learning required in the conference and assist in demonstrating the various strategies and also in delivering them. There will be no need to scream at the maximum of their voice in the conference. The microphone and Overhead projectors will enable each participant to attending the conference. When they see and hear clearly, they understand more and this leads to better learning. They easily grasp what is being taught. They get to interact with the learning processes writes Folger (2001). The LCD projector will be used to slide shows of PowerPoint into a projecting screen for members of the public to see.

Marketing strategies and implementation

The presentation, delivery and style of the information are termed as paramount, and engaging the argument through clear, succinct sentences can determine conference attendance. However, the deliberation on promoting and designing the conference as a brand name and can cause people to love or hate a conference. These may often be inundated in a quest for conference success. However, if façade with premeditated failures the frontage of solidity could develop very conference failure argues Bulmer (1995).

It is irrefutable that conference organizers now market in more coordinated comportment through rephrasing particular themes and even the line of the day so as to have a lucid inspiration of their targets. They rely mainly on consultants, media advisers and marketers. I have to note that marketing strategies are introduced in the event management arena owing to the delight of the public wrote Bulmer (1995). Owing to the magnitude of dynamism in modern societies and specifically as far as communications are concerned there is a major earthquake among the event organizers structures in that old bureaucratic strategies are becoming obsolete added Wood (2005).

Risk management

In order for this project to be successful, we need to familiarize ourselves with the risk associated with the project and how to go about them. Setting the project will need licenses’ from world inventors as well as the government this will allows to have project successful argues Bodea, Hapkea and Zislerc (2003).

After the event is over, there are always those people who are considered to be critics who are to give a review on how the festival was. According to their review, people will be able to attend the next with no problem or vice versa. Therefore for one to be able to host another function in the future and expect people to attend it, the first should be able to get a good review added Hiller (1998).

This risk management plan was devised in accordance with the data derived from the risk management section of the book Information Systems Project Management (Hallows 1998). With this plan, there are few manageable risks and the management team is knowledgeable and professional to make the implementation of this project straightforward.

Mitigation is the process by which a project management team reduces the probability and impact of an event, thus reducing the risk of that event. There are four means to reduce the risk:

• Remove Excuses – providers and clients must know the project schedule and expectations, especially the consequences of slippage from these aims
• Visibility – providers must know expectations and milestones for the project, ensuring prompt delivery of items
• Communication – project manager must be involved with what is occurring with employees, clients and providers. By interacting with them, dilemmas, such as employee grievances, are tempered.
• Plan Fallbacks – these are created in order to provide swift, concise actions to any setbacks the project may encounter.

The mitigation strategies for the risks noted previously are given below in the order of its priority.

Finances

It is a summary reflecting all resources needed their value and the total cost of having the resources for the project. The officers must know how to do budgeting for the conference because they understand their financial needs. It should be all-inclusive to avoid under and overestimation. The budget estimates should be realistic, keeping in mind that it is a forecast rather than a definitive statement of costs and prices.

A good budget and proper planning are important components in the successful management of any conference. Poor projections and unnecessary ignoring of pertinent issues may easily derail the financial plan leaving the organization in serious problems. It calls for great care, to avoid leading the company into the financial red stated Gibson Willming and Holdnak (2002).

The conference budget will as follows:

• Hire of conference facilities – 20,000
• Accommodation and meals (500 delegates) – 75,000
• Conference stationary – 3,000
• Hire of hall – 30,000
• Transport – 25,000
• Communication and logics – 18,000
• Professional Conference organizers – 40,000
• Miscellaneous – 22,000
• Total estimated expenditure – 233,000

Sources of finance:

• Members’ registration – 150,000
• AATPA – 10,000
• Tourism operators – 10,000
• Commercial enterprises – 8000
• Government through tourism department – 60,000
• Total – 238,000
• Surplus from the conference – 5,000

Sponsors

The main sponsor will be the government because it is the main stakeholder in the tourism sector. The tourism operators will also contribute as they will be beneficiaries of the success of the conference.

Commercial enterprises will sponsor in terms of water, stationary and many conferences materials as a way of advertising.

Conclusions & recommendations

The answer to poor attendance to AATPA conferences is not more, but better marketing and making it affordable. The emphasis should be on quality, not quantity. The expansion of the conference is often recommended, and not only by those with a vested interest in the conference. The argument that conference has not produced observable results because it is insufficient avoids the need for a critical examination, which could be unpleasant for some. It probably means having to recruit and train more trainers, convenience venues, a greater strain on management of AATPA, and, most important of all, releasing more tourism officials to attend courses. The government must take a leading role in training its officials for the efficient management of the tourism government affairs argues Fleckenstein and Fleischer (2003).

There I will recommend:

1. More advertising should be carried out to attract more people to the 2011 conference to be held in Sydney.
2. Price should be adjusted downward to attract more members.
3. Well-known speakers should be outsourced to make the conference more attractive.
4. More research should be carried out to investigate the reasons for low turnout.

References

Blake, A., Sinclair, M.T. (2003): Tourism crisis management – US response to September 11, Annals of Tourism Research 30, 813–832.

Bodea, S., Hapkea, J. & Zislerc, S. (2003) Need and options for a regenerative energy supply in holiday facilities. Tourism Management, 24, pp. 257–266).

Bulmer, J.1995. Public Relations and marketing strategies: A new dimension. London Rutledge.

Chakra D, Sills E. and, Cubage FW. (2008), The Significance of Festivals to Rural Economies: Estimating the Economic Impacts of Scottish Highland Games in North Carolina. Journal of Travel Research [Internet]. 2009. Web.

Definer A.M and Labrianidis L. (2005). Planning culture and time in a mega-event: Thessaloniki as the European city of culture in 1997. International Planning Studies. 2009. Web.

Emery P.R. (2002). Bidding to host a major sports event: The local organizing committee perspective. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 2009. Web.

Essex S and Chalkley B. (2004).Mega-sporting events in urban and regional policy: a history of the Winter Olympics. 2009. Web.

Fleckenstein D. and Fleischer E. (2003). Local Festivals and Tourism Promotion: The Role of Public Assistance and Visitor Expenditure. Journal of Travel Research. 2009. Web.

Folger, R. 2001. In S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner, & D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.), Research in social issues in management: 3–31. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Gibson H, Willming C, and Holdnak A. (2002). Small-scale event sport tourism: fans as tourists. Web.

Hallows, J. (1998). Information systems project management: how to deliver function and value in information technology projects. New York: Amazon. P 82-90.

Hiller H.H. (1998). Assessing the Impact of Mega-Events: 1988. Sociology Department, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW. 2009. Web.

Mitchell L.S. (2004). Estimating income effects of a sport tourism event. 1. Annual Tourism Research. 2009. Web.

Professional Conference Organizers (PCO). Web.

Wood E.H. (2005). Measuring the economic and social impacts of local authority events. International Journal of Public Sector Management. 2009. Web.

Appendix

Evaluation Tool for Training Participants

Kindly answer the following questions in relation to the training you have just attended. Give your answers to the best of your knowledge as your suggestions will give us the way forward on what needs to be improved, added or done away with.

1. Were the course objectives in line with the training? If YES or NO Explain…….…………………………………………………………………
2. Which topics did you enjoy most and why……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
3. Which topics didn’t you enjoy or were difficult to you to understand and ………………………………………………………………………
4. Was the training facilitated well? If NO Explain………………………..……………………………………………………………………………………
5. Was the course duration enough? If NO Explain……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
6. Is the training relevant to your profession? If NO Explain………..………………………………………………………………………………………
7. Which new ideas have learnt from the training?………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
8. Did you like training venue, food and accommodation/ If NO Explain……………………………………………………………………………….
9. Which changes could you recommend to be made in the next trainings in future?..……………………………………………………………..
10. Did you enjoy learning and working wit your course mates?………………………………………………………………………………………………
11. Any general comment about the training…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………