Conferences are good for business and that’s the bottom line

YOU don’t often get to see the naked rear views of foreign visitors to Ireland in a PowerPoint slide during a presentation organised by a state-sponsored body.

Now, to be fair, it’s not such a challenge when the two people in the photograph have a narrow black spoiler across their crucial parts, but when has a narrow black spoiler prevented intellectual speculation, I ask you?

The conference was about an aspect of Ireland’s tourism offering which had passed me by. I’m still in the John Hinde-crossed- with-Newgrange era of tourism. I try hard to keep up, but every now and then, I backslide. I blame the confusion created by the way tourism breeds acronyms. Like SITE (the Society of Incentive and Travel Executives), ITOA (Incoming Tour Operators Association Ireland) and ICCA (International Conference and Congress Association). All these and many more, operating at different points in the tourism story, were present last week at a conference organised by Fáilte Ireland. None batted an eyelid at the modesty line across the naked rear ends in the pictures, concentrating instead on giving a mighty round of applause to an academic who specialises in how the human body, naked or clothed, uses energy.

The ovation, for a TCD senior lecturer named Dr Richard Porter, didn’t come about because of his ground-breaking work on obesity. Nope. It came about because Dr Porter has delivered more than €3m to the economy by bringing major academic conferences to this country.

Conferences, Congresses, Annual General Whatevers are part of the bright future of Irish tourism. It starts with the decision to locate an organisation’s major coming- together in Ireland in a particular year. As soon as that decision is made, all those who might be persuaded to attend get battered with information, not just about the academic heavyweights who will speak to the gathered group, but about the location and the delights awaiting participants when they drag themselves away from the tough work of listening, learning and debating and head for the attractions surrounding the central location.

So, when an organisation — whether of microbiologists or beekeepers (none of our splendid conference venues care whether it’s an academic group or a bunch of people brought together by a common trade, profession or leisure pursuit — decides to have its next annual ‘do’ in Galway, Cork, Athlone or Dublin, they learn, many of them for the first time, of the marvels of the host country. Technically, that would come under the heading of Strategic Marketing, and it ensures that Bug Doctor A, who decides that she’ll skip next year’s conference for various personal and professional reasons, nevertheless thinks that, quite apart from the conference, she might visit Ireland with her family at some future point, because little Ireland looks remarkably appealing in the literature she received. Which is good, albeit not as immediately good as the fact that Bug Doctors C, D, E and several hundred others can attend this year’s conference, and book their places.

AS soon as they do that, airlines, conference venues and hotels get a warm rush of optimism about their spreadsheets for the year. The conference venues because their main auditorium and a rake of breakout rooms will be fully utilised for several days. The hotels, even if they are not themselves hosting the conference, because it means the block-booking of beds and rooms. Down the line, everybody from the craft butcher to the local audio-visual specialists can look forward to improving their bottom line.

In fact, conferences and congresses may be worth as much as three times the leisure tourism area to the economy. In other words, we’re all delighted to welcome backbackers from Sweden and coach tourists from the USA, but several hundred orthopaedic surgeons or forklift drivers coming here for their annual knees-up has a more beneficial economic impact.

The orthopods just referred to might get shirty about a conference involving them being described as a knees-up. But whatever they call it, the fact is that it will include scientific papers on hip replacement, joint mobility or prosthetic replacement of cancer-damaged bone, and those papers will carry the tag in news coverage globally that they were presented at the yearly conference, held this week in Dublin, Ireland, which works as a reminder to readers would might consider visiting this country for a holiday. At the personal end, each individual participant may get a chance to see some of Ireland, enjoy some leisure pursuits, listen to some great music, savour some good food, and end up regarding the time they spent here at the conference as having been a first sample of a destination worthy of a longer visit at a later date.

It’s the most complete win/win around, and Fáilte Ireland are eager to let potential conference ambassadors know that they can get data support and financial assistance if they want to pitch, within an international sporting, academic or other body, for the chance to have its yearly congress hosted somewhere in Ireland.

Apparently, we’re not just good at winning such pitches, but even better at winning after an initial loss. It’s a bit like giving up cigarettes — every failure predisposes the smoker to eventual success. More than one Irish entity, having failed to attract a conference to this country at its first attempt, has succeeded second time around. It can be as simple as coincidence: the first time an Irish body proposes this country as a venue may unfortunately coincide with the year that Asia is due to get its big break. But where they’ve made a strong argument, they tend to be encouraged to market the proposition again the following year, when the wind is more likely to be in our direction.

The fascinating aspect of this is how many people, worldwide, join organisations or societies or associations related to their profession, sport, business or obsession, creating structures for contact and an almost inevitable desire to get together once a year to celebrate being Parrot Heads or UFO-watchers or kettle-bell swingers. Businesses making stents, circus performers doing stunts and climatologists worrying in a scientific way about weather, all add up to a growing market.

It’s a unique market, in that it can only be sold by people who aren’t tourism professionals. One executive at a recent Fáilte Ireland brainstorming session said one of the first things she did, having given birth to her twins, was join a global multiple birth organisation. As a “conference ambassador”, she may try to bring their annual conference here.

If you’d fancy being such a conference ambassador for your academic discipline, professional group or hobby, Fáilte Ireland would love to help you bring its annual conference to Ireland. Even your oddball obsession could bring business to this country. As long as it’s legal, of course. As Naturism is. When you pick the right location.