The fundamental values of gathering, direct communication, networking and mutual exchange of ideas is widely identified since ancient times. Conferences, a sector of business tourism, encompass these values and involve delegates and all those actors that contribute to their organization, forming, therefore, the conference ecosystem. The epoch that we are unanimously passing now is characterized by Social Media conversations, user-generated content, remote control of life through mobile devices and dynamic interaction during the service production. The aforementioned are key factors that evolve tremendously the tourism services to targeted, efficient, context-based services. Passive receipt of service is transformed to an interactive process between producers and consumers introducing therefore in the literature the term of ‘’prosumer’’ (Xie et al, 2008).
Not all the conference stakeholders deliver a direct impact on the delegates experience, nevertheless, their contribution remains important. The conference represents a sub-sector of business tourism which subsequently faces changes to its structure, processes, service perception. The significant advances in technologies shape innovative ways of communication, cooperation, tasks completion, and consumers’ expectations.
The concept of smartness and the conference segment is extensively analyzed in the literature review since this dissertation aims to lay the reasonable ground on the concept of “Smart Conference ecosystem” with a case study of AIESEC conferences supported by professional aspect and consists of five chapters. The first chapter introduces the conference sector, while the second aims to conceptualize the smart conference. Considerably, the layout of the analysis demonstrates the design of research method conditions. The findings of the qualitative analysis are revealed in the following section. Ultimately, the closing section summarizes results and recommendations.
Keywords: Conference, Business Tourism, Ecosystem, Smartness, Smart Conference
Collections
Show Collections
