Evaluation of Destination Characteristics and Public Relation Activities by Convention Bureaus

In the tourism industry, convention industry is emerging as one of the most important sections and is diversifying at a rapid pace because of direct and indirect impacts on an economy. Various stakeholders are concerned in convention industry for the reason that it is an essential factor in promoting inbound tourism in Japan. Convention bureaus play an important role to attract convention business in Japan, so this study focuses on convention bureaus perception about destination characteristics and public relation activities and discusses the differences between non-experienced and experienced convention bureaus. The questionnaire was conducted at the 25th international Meetings Expo (IME 2015) held on December 9-10, 2015, at the Tokyo International Forum, Japan. In method, descriptive statistics of questionnaire items and binary logistic regression which examined the differences between experienced and non-experienced group were adopted. In descriptive statistics, the findings indicate that presence or absence of a structure for cooperation among convention bureaus, facility staff and hotel staff to attract international conventions showed an exclusively high mean score. In logistic regression, the experienced tend to have higher awareness of accommodation, price, cooperative structure, and unique culture than non-experienced.