Section 4: Strategy development
Introduction
Strategy development is important no matter how advanced (or not) your destination may be in attracting business events. It’s needed to establish your current position, where you want to be and developing a plan on how to achieve your aims and objectives.
It is an opportunity for you to prioritise the activity you wish to deliver and may also support you in obtaining relevant funding / grants from the public or private sector.
Creating your strategy in collaboration with your local leadership, stakeholders and delivery partners is critical. You need them on the journey with you, with a clear understanding of their role in the delivery of your strategy.
Before starting to develop your strategy consider your destination’s local economic development and inward investment strategies and plans. It’s helpful to understand where business events fit into other strategies so that you can align your goals and actions to support other strategies within the destination.
Mirroring the language of these strategies ensures that your business events strategy speaks to relevant stakeholders and will reflect how business events can support the destination in delivering against existing economic and inward investment goals.
Business events strategy considerations
There are three things to consider when developing your business events strategy — your current position, your future goals and what you will do to achieve those goals. Here you will find a series of questions to consider when developing your strategy:
Executive summary
- Purpose: Outline the strategy’s aim.
- Vision: Long-term goals for business events.
- Key Goals: Economic, social, and environmental objectives.
Current situation
- Overview: Current position of business events.
- SWOT:
- Strengths: Key advantages.
- Weaknesses: Current challenges.
- Opportunities: Growth areas.
- Threats: External risks.
- Infrastructure: Hotels, venues, and transport networks.
- Resources & Budget.
- Impact: Economic, environmental, and social outcomes.
Vision and goals
- Vision: Desired future state.
- Goals: Quantitative (for example, delegate numbers) and qualitative (for example, quality improvements).
- Alignment: How this fits with local and regional and national goals / government agenda.
Target outcomes
- Targets: Increase events, delegates, and revenue.
- KPIs: Attendance, visitor satisfaction, and economic impact, carbon emissions etc
Action plan
Actions (examples):
- Develop marketing strategies.
- Upgrade venues and infrastructure.
- Implement sustainable practices.
- Responsibilities: Assign key tasks to partners.
- Timeline: Set milestones.
Resources and investment
- Funding: Capital for infrastructure and marketing.
- Skills: Event management and sustainability expertise.
- Infrastructure: Hotels, transport, and conference facilities.
Collaboration
- Partners: Local authorities, tourism boards, trade bodies.
- Roles: Define partner responsibilities.
Monitoring & reporting
- Progress: Regular reviews.
- Reporting: Update stakeholders and publish reports.
- Risk: Identify and mitigate potential issues.