The conference devoted to questions of the development of business hospitality ‘Conference industry: perspectives and development directions of Lviv’ was held on Wednesday, March 11th.
Approximately 90 persons participated in the conference, who were representatives of universities, unique historical institutions, hotels, tour operators and professional event organizers from Lviv and region and from Kyiv. Local experts and specially invited speakers from Krakow, Warsaw, Vienna and Kyiv presented their reports for the participants of the conference.
The director of business development EXPO XXI in Warsaw Anna Górska began the conference and told how during a few years Gdansk had changed in consequence of the development of business tourism. Then professors of Krakow University of Economics Agata Niemczyk and Renata Seweryn shared the information about calculation the economic impact of business events in the city.
The participants of the conference were divided into specialized groups: unique institutions and universities, hotels, tour operators and event organizers. Thus, for example, the speakers for the group “Hotels” were representatives of the hotel – InterContinental Kiev; they told about the MICE industry standards, which the hotel must adhere, about cooperation between hotels and tour operators, between hotels and different agencies. Also they discussed whether participation in international exhibitions and workshops would be in priority for 2015.
Deputy of the Parliament of Ukraine, Secretary of the Committee, Chairman of the Subcommittee on tourism development, resorts and recreational activities of the Parliamentary Committee of Ukraine for family, youth, sports and tourism Anna Romanova presented a report on threats and prospects of the development of tourism in terms of military aggression of Russia. The report covered the problems of public administration in tourism and main components of the tourism reform in Ukraine.
Myron Uhryn, honorary president of the Association of implantologists of Ukraine and Community Project Coordinator LvivEXPO, presented the idea of building congress hall. His report aroused great interest in all the participants, because the absence of the hall, which can accommodate a large amount of people at one time, is a pressing problem for the city and hinders its development in the MICE market.
At the conference there were also presented two IT-ideas that would help conference organizers and local business in dealing with organizational questions soon and would be useful to analyze the MICE market. In particular, a software product was presented that would allow you to count the number and type of conferences that were held in the city, seasonality, estimate the overall trend in the traffic of the city. The idea of a mobile application for conference organizers also was presented and discussed.
All photos from the conference can be found here.
Speaker’s presentation you can find here.
