The Long Tail of Business Event Legacies

Project Member(s): Edwards, D., Schlenker, K., Foley, C.

Funding or Partner Organisation: Business Events Sydney Limited (Business Events Sydney LTD)

Start year: 2014

Summary: Since 2010, BESydney have facilitated three studies which have identified the Beyond Tourism Benefits (BTB) of business events. Each report has built on the last. These reports leave no doubt that business events with their unique mix of inter alia face to face meetings, forums, presentations, workshops and social opportunities are driving industry, product development and the knowledge economy. Indeed each of these reports has indicated that not only do these benefits occur during and immediately post the business event but are still being realised more than three years after the event. Therefore BESydney has posed the question: what are these benefits and what is their contribution to trade, foreign investment, career development, industry growth and expansion, global talent and business migration, research collaborations, innovation and product development? This is a complex and challenging question. The purpose of this study is to reveal the long tail of business events and to identify the tangible outcomes that can be achieved by delegates, exhibitors and associations through the hosting and attendance at a business event. The study will achieve this by revisiting the previously sampled events from the second BTB study (Edwards, Foley, & Schlenker, 2011), to examine what further long-tail outcomes have been realised in the years that have passed.

Publications:

Edwards, D, Foley, C & Jasovska, P 2022, ''From Dirt to Shirt': Australian Cotton Conferences Driving Industry Transformation', Event Management, vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 1041-1055.
View/Download from: Publisher's site

Foley, C, Edwards, D & Weber, K 2021, 'Chapter 2 Conferences as Catalysts for Thriving Economies' in Business Event Legacies, Goodfellow, Oxford.

Edwards, D, Foley, C & Malone, C 2017, The Power of Conferences: Stories of serendipity, innovation and driving social change, University of Technology, Sydney, Sydney.
View/Download from: Publisher's site

Edwards, D, Cheng, M, Wong, IA, Zhang, J & Wu, Q 2017, 'Ambassadors of knowledge sharing', International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 690-708.
View/Download from: Publisher's site

Keywords: Legacy, business events, long term, BTB

FOR Codes: Impacts of Tourism, Management, Impacts of tourism

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.