ABSTRACT
It has already been seen that conference tourism is a subsector of business tourism, itself a sector within the overall tourism industry, comprising both business and leisure tourism. All projections by economists confirm that the tourism industry was set to become the world’s largest industry by the millennium or in this first decade thereafter. A press release entitled ‘Millennium Tourism Boom in 2000’, issued by the World Tourism Organization (WTO) in January 2001, shows that world tourism grew by an estimated 7.4 per cent in 2000, with the fastest developing region being East Asia and the Pacific, which recorded a 14.5 per cent increase over the previous year. In 2001, owing to factors such as ‘September 11th’ and economic slowdown in many countries, there was negative growth (a decrease of 0.6 per cent) but projections for 2002 were for a return to growth. In 2001, the top six tourism destinations were (in ranking order): 1, France; 2, Spain; 3, USA; 4, Italy; 5, China; 6, UK (www.world-tourism.org/newsroom/releases).
