Impacts and different types of business travel and tourism

The nature of impacts varies between different types of business travel and tourism, some of these differences are outlined bellow:

Type of business travel and tourism	Economic impact	Environmental impact	Social impact
Individual business trip	Higher than leisure tourism, but very little for an individual traveller. However, can be considerable in cities which attract a lot of individual business trips	Very limited for the individual traveller. In major destinations for individual business trips the volume of travellers can have great transport-related environmental impacts	Very limited for the individual traveller. Can be substantial in destinations which receive a considerable number of individual business trips
Conferences and meetings	Significant positive impact due to relatively high-spending by delegates. Individual conferences can generate millions of pounds of expenditure over a short period. Creates more economic impact if it is a residential conference. Creates income for individual smaller specialist suppliers such as audiovisual companies, photographers, etc. as well as venues	Apart from transport impacts there is the impact caused by the construction of new conference facilities, particularly large-scale convention centres	Depends on the volume of conferences in a particular destination. High in major convention destinations
Exhibitions	Considerable as they are often major events using the services of a wide range of suppliers. However, often suppliers are not locally based so that the expenditure ‘leaks’ from the local economy	Apart from transport, there are also impacts caused by new exhibition centre construction	Limited unless destinations attract large numbers of exhibition visitors
Incentive travel	Limited as groups tend to be relatively small. However, spending per head is usually high	Depends on the location of the package. Problems may arise with packages where the core activity includes visits to fragile environments or wild-life watching	Very limited unless the volume of incentive travel in a particular destination is particularly high
Product launches	High spending but usually over very short time periods	Limited unless using the environment as the venue for the launch	Very limited due to it being a short-duration, infrequent activity
Training courses	Considerable if destination/venue attracts many such courses. Can be long in duration which also increases economic impact	Limited unless it involves ‘survival’ type adventure training in fragile environments for example	Very limited