Meeting Planners’ Perception on Convention Destination Attributes: Empirical Evidence from Six Major Asian Convention Cities

Abstract

This paper examined meeting planners’ perception on Asian convention destinations and their attributes. Meeting Planners, Certified Meeting Professionals (CMP), were asked to indicate (1) how they plan to select destination by checking the attributes of a destination, (2) meeting venues and overnight accommodations. This study will contribute to the literature on the meeting and convention management since it deals with the planner’s aspects in the context of his/her role in the site selection procedure as well as strategic event/meeting planning process. Descriptive statistics using frequency distribution and mean performance scores showed that Tokyo is ranked as the first preference followed by Hong Kong, Singapore, and Beijing. Furthermore, findings indicate that meeting facilities are very important attributes attracting and pulling meeting planners as well as their meetings, conventions, and exhibitions to the city. As this study is one of the first cross-national empirical tests of its kind to compare the important convention destination attributes, the findings of this study strengthen the destination management organizations (DMOs) in explaining their meeting attractiveness within the context of hosting more meetings to their cities.