Evaluating the benefits of conferences is an essential process for assessing the value produced by the activities of the conference. However, current evaluation tools in the sector remain underdeveloped, often focusing narrowly on delegate satisfaction and tourism outcomes, metrics that overlook the deeper, transformative potential of conferences. This article addresses this gap by introducing a set of empirically grounded constructs that define and categorize broader conference benefits. Drawing on 15 years of international research, the article identifies constructs relevant to three key communities—scientific, destination, and global—and offers a foundation for developing qualitative and quantitative research instruments. Each construct is derived from empirical evidence and grouped according to its primary beneficiary. The constructs presented serve as initial reference points that reflect current knowledge and aim to guide future research and practice in evaluating the broader value of conferences.

This critical commentary focuses on the research in Event Management on economic sustainability and events. We begin with a broad definition of an economically sustainable event that builds on economic impact to include social equity, livability, and community well-being, and accounts for environmental and social costs. We consider the methods, approaches, and types of events represented in the journal that lack diversity. The findings indicate that quantitative approaches predominate, focused on the direct and indirect contributions of visitor expenditure. Social, natural, and community capital have received less attention. The review calls for greater consideration of the economic sustainability of events beyond the tourism contribution; longitudinal studies on the impacts of events on the economic well-being of communities; understanding how events impact equity; correcting research bias towards Western developed economies by examining different contexts; exploring multiple event types; and investigating the role of planning in realizing economically sustainable events.

Although the literature identifies various benefits of business events, more work is required to investigate the ways in which such outcomes are achieved and how they fit into a whole of industry ecosystem. In this study, we apply the concept of sustainable business models to explore elements and mechanisms of how values combining economic, social, and environmental stakeholder benefits are proposed, created, delivered, and captured through conferences. To study these nuances, we analyze the case of the Australian cotton industry conferences. Our findings suggest that mechanisms of building industry community, forming a social platform, and managing sustainability solutions were core conference elements that led to desired industry changes. The study contributes to business events literature by delineating a means of achieving industry outcomes as a result of organizing industry conferences. The article proposes a business model specifically reflective of the Australian cotton industry conferences.

Conference exhibitors are important stakeholders in the business events sector. Yet, industry professionals such as conference organizers, convention bureau, and convention centers have limited understanding of the needs and motivations of exhibitors at conferences. Research on exhibitor motivations in the business events sector has largely focused on exhibitions and trade shows and neglected motivations for exhibiting at conferences. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to address this gap: to determine the motivations of conference exhibitors. The article presents findings from semistructured interviews with 26 exhibitors from four conferences held in Sydney, Australia, representing four industry sectors-medical, engineering, technology, and community services. Surprisingly, sales were not a primary motivation for conference exhibitors. Conference exhibitors are motivated to contribute to their respective industry sectors through sharing knowledge and information, building relationships, and building brand reputation within the industry space.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a global economic recession, but little is known about the impact it has had on the informal economy, including the peer-to-peer rental market. This study assessed the financial loss of Airbnb listings for its hosts in Greater Sydney, Australia. Findings show that comparing August 2020 to January 2020, the pandemic resulted in 89.5 per cent income loss for Airbnb hosts (about 14 million) with hosts suffering about 6.5 times more than the Airbnb platform itself. However, many Airbnb hosts are not eligible for the financial aid being offered by the NSW State Government or the Australian Federal Government. The study further demonstrates the vulnerability of the sharing economy during a time of crisis. It contributes empirical evidence to the widening public debate on the sharing economy's contribution to sustainable tourism and decent work (SDG 8), and reduced inequalities (SDG 10), and, most importantly, it raises concerns over taxation and social protections for informal employees. Methodologically, this study contributes to the literature by presenting a comprehensive income accounting framework to analyse this segment of the workforce's financial performance, which can serve as benchmark for tax estimation and financial aids.

The burgeoning field of sport-for-development (SFD) is witnessing a steady increase in experience-related empirical investigations. To support academics-and in particular young and emerging scholars-with a rigorous framework for investigating social and cultural phenomena in different SFD contexts, we propose the process-oriented sport in development settings (SPIDS) research framework. SPIDS represents a guiding framework that advocates a qualitative approach to researching SFD projects in which multiple methods are combined for a holistic in-depth investigation. In this paper, we apply practical examples from the SFD field to the SPIDS framework and discuss its individual sections in a step-by-step manner. Specific focus is placed on aspects of reflection and reflexivity as distinctly important and underpinning aspects of qualitative SFD research.

Using the sharing economy (SE) as the context, this article provides a coherent and nuanced methodological understanding of automated content analysis (ACA) in tourism and hospitality (TH) field. By adopting a comparative ACA approach, the paper compares the current TH Western academic literature of the SE with news media discourse in TH from the period 2011–2016 (August) (inclusive). The emerging issues from the news media discourse, such as mobility, SE companies and the role of government, are absent in current tourism academic research. Findings reveal that ACA can facilitate a more systematic comparison between different sources of data. This paper offers a starting point for tourism scholars to methodologically engage with ACA that can draw useful insights on a particular context.

Opportunities exist for organisations in urban environments to adopt strategies to support struggling rural communities. In the food sector, organisations can engage small local suppliers via a targeted short food supply chain procurement program. We report on an Australian case study in which a large international convention centre has committed to support small local suppliers by engaging them to provide their fresh produce requirements. This article contributes to the literature on the benefits and challenges of a short food supply chain approach to procurement. We argue that despite an incongruent and novel relationship between a large consumer and small local suppliers that there are several reasons to encourage such a collaboration including reduction of market volatility, increased direct expenditure, employment opportunities, and improved environmental sustainability practices. We identify potential opportunities and issues for both parties to consider in relation to risk, collaboration and trust.

Decisions occur throughout the travel and holiday process and there have been models built to understand the selections and choices tourists can make. Some of the choices which have to be made include what kind of accommodation, which attractions to visit, companions, budget and expenditure, the destination, trip duration, meals, shopping purchases, routes and forms of transportation. Recent work has distinguished between rational choice models and decision models involving the interplay of multiple influential variables and the contrasting styles of fast thinking and decisions built on the use of heuristics.

Architecture has been recognized for its supporting role in the enhancement of the physical assets of destinations, which play a leading role in drawing tourists who identify and associate destinations with these architectural landmarks. While generating tourist expenditure is not the aim of most architects, many are increasingly aware that articulated and functional buildings become visitor attractions in their own right – an externality that requires valuing. However, the value assigned to iconic architecture is often restricted to the bricks and mortar construction, and the broader contributions a building can deliver to its stakeholders are largely ignored. This article explores the capacity for architecture to attract tourists and effect direct tourism spend through the examination of five cases, each of which has attempted to estimate their economic value to tourism. This article proposes a model for estimating the future value of iconic buildings and tests its application to the University of Technology Sydney, Gehry-designed, Dr Chau Chak Wing building. The implications of the framework and future research are discussed.

One of the key factors shaping the future of tourism is climate change (Becken & Hay, 2007; Dwyer et al., 2009; Nordin, 2005). Burns and Bibbings (2009) even predict “the end of tourism” should current consumption patterns prevail. There is an alternative to this future, but to develop “new imaginations for the sustainable development” of tourism we must understand the wicked problem of tourists’ environmental behavior. Tourists’ environmental behavior impacts on sustainable development to varying degrees (Becken et al, 2003; Metz et al., 2007) depending on whether they behave responsibly or irresponsibly. People consider holidays as a break from everyday life (Becken, 2004; Dolnicar & Grün, 2009) which suggests that people may behave differently when they are tour- ists. For this reason, this chapter explores tourists’ uptake of environmental behaviors by examining their propensity to responsible environmental behavior while travelling. A better understanding of tourists’ environmental behavior can lead to strategies that support collaborative actions “towards facilitating tourism development that is inherently sustainable” (Jennings, 2018). Environmental behavior is a very complex field of research (Hergesell, 2017). Such behavior is determined by a range of internal and external factors with the significance of these factors differing dependent on the person, the context and the type of behavior under study. The question is hence how to reduce ‘irresponsible’ behavior.

This article provides an objective, systematic, and integrated review of the Western academic literature on adventure tourism to discover the theoretical foundations and key themes underlying the field by combining three complementary approaches of bibliometric analysis, content analysis, and a quantitative systematic review. A total of 114 publications on adventure tourism were identified that revealed three broad areas of foci with adventure tourism research: (1) adventure tourism experience, (2) destination planning and development, and (3) adventure tourism operators. Adventure tourism has an intellectual tradition from multiple disciplines, such as the social psychology of sport and recreation. There is an underrepresentation of studies examining non-Western tourists in their own geographic contexts or non-Western tourists in Western geographic contexts. Our findings pave ways for developing a more robust framework and holistic understanding of the adventure tourism field.

Globally there are hundreds of convention centres, which host more than 24,000 different association meetings each year (International Congress and Convention Association, 2016). Unlike the hotel sector (Bohdanowicz-Godfrey, 2013) and tourism operations sector (Carlsen & Edwards, 2013a) which have documented “practices towards more sustainable modes of operation” (Carlsen & Edwards, 2013a: 33), little has been documented in the research literature about the collaborative potentials of a convention centre to deliver benefits beyond tourist visitation (Edwards et al., 2014; Mair & Jago, 2010). This case study makes a contribution to this research gap by examining a convention centre, International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney), with significant purchasing power to work with and influence suppliers in a backward supply chain. ICC Sydney’s Feeding Your Performance (FYP) initiative encourages environmentally sustainable behaviour as part of its organisational practices and supports and collaborates with a range of suppliers who are working to improve the agricultural ecosystems in their farming areas. Ecosystem is defined as “the minimum aggregated set of processes (including biochemical, biophysical and biological ones) that ensure the biological productivity, organisational integrity and perpetuation of the ecosystem” (Swift et al., 2004:115).

The journey of Collaboration for Sustainable Tourism Development has aimed high by keeping heads in the clouds and feet on the ground, to visit critical and optimistic possibilities for what sustainable tourism development was, is, and may become. This chapter gives substance to the potential of collaboration for sustainable tourism development by indicating the significance of imagina- tion. Envisaging tourism futures implies that tourism researchers, students, practitioners, policy makers – all stakeholders – engender other kinds of relationships, interactions and conversations to imagine what could be. It is a feasible process of designing with as an ethical, ongoing involvement of others through a respect for their ways of being in the world, their sense of values and aspirations for better tourism futures in a better world. In this chapter, we do so by leveraging the variations of interpretation represented in the making of this book and the previous fourteen chapters. This book encompasses philosophical, conceptual and empirical research to expose conditions, empirical circumstances and underpinning values. The contributions meet in the application of the concept of collaboration to uncover what sustainable tourism development was, and presently is, and signposts how unknown futures can be imagined. Imagining collaborative tourism futures is predicated on epistemological and mutually shared responsibilities. These obligations cannot alone be captured by academics engaged in a persistent quest for knowledge, critical dialogue and thinking tourism into the future. Responsibilities are intimately connected to a holistic understanding of collaborative engagements with the wider world in shaping desirable futures. Imaginations of collaborative tourism futures are a response to current limitations of sustainable tourism development, where we charter the contours of tourism futures to tackle wider societal problems.

Explores the role of collaboration in tourism to sustain livelihoods, create profitable partnerships, and protect cultures and the environment.

PurposeThe aim of this study is to understand the knowledge-sharing structure and co-production of trip-related knowledge through online travel forums.Design/methodology/approachThe travel forum threads were collected from TripAdvisor’s Sydney travel forum for the period from 2010 to 2014, which contains 115,847 threads from 8,346 conversations. The data analytical technique was based on a novel methodological approach – visual analytics, including semantic pattern generation and network analysis.FindingsFindings indicate that the knowledge structure is created by community residents who camouflage as local experts and serve as ambassadors of a destination. The knowledge structure presents collective intelligence co-produced by community residents and tourists. Further findings reveal how these community residents associate with each other and form a knowledge repertoire with information covering various travel domain areas.Practical implicationsThe study offers valuable insights to help destination-management organizations and tour operators identify existing and emerging tourism issues to achieve a competitive destination advantage.Originality/valueThis study highlights the process of social media mediated travel knowledge co-production. It also discovers how community residents engage in reaching out to tourists by camouflaging as ordinary users.