This text is part of the special Business Tourism booklet
“The tourism industry will have to adapt to the fact that business tourism will no longer return to pre-pandemic levels,” says Marc-Antoine Vachon, holder of the Transat Chair in Tourism at the School of Management Sciences. ‘UQAM, which has just published its long-awaited 2023 trend book.
According to the researcher who led the publication of the Notebook, this transformation can be explained by the rapid development of videoconferencing. Large employers and multinationals have seen their advantage and are reducing staff travel to what is necessary.
This trend presents a danger and an opportunity for the Quebec tourism industry. Business travelers spend much more than leisure tourists, and they travel acyclically, that is, outside of peak periods. Their permanent reduction could upset the entire industry.
The opportunity to be seized is called “hybridization”: business travelers are increasingly combining their business trip with pleasure. And conversely, those who are on vacation will extend their stay to telecommute in a charming place. “The great maxim of our time, which would sum up a large part of our book, is to ‘join the pleasant with the useful’, he explains. The trend is global and profoundly affects travel habits. You have to be able to take advantage of it. »
The five trends
I’hybridization is just one of five underlying trends identified by the 2023 trend bookand unveiled at the Chair’s annual conference at the end of January.
The other four are theexperimentation (the desire to try something new), the synergy (the collaboration between organizations), the connection (with nature, culture, in the environment, to oneself) and the accountability (around sustainable development).
Each of these trends is described by the menu in the 85 pages of the document. Hybridization means that business tourists travel with their spouses, or even their children, to take advantage of the destination. “It opens up all sorts of new opportunities, but it creates additional expectations, such as the quality and security of Internet access, which becomes an essential condition. »
The infancy of the metaverse is a good example of the trend towards experimentation. “Video game enthusiasts are familiar with these immersive virtual universes, and it is still experimental elsewhere. But the metaverse offers prospects in the sale of congresses by allowing organizers to visualize a destination. »
THE 2023 trend bookwhich is in its third annual edition, is based on the analysis of more than 750 foreign sources, to which we add an exclusive survey of 1,000 Quebec respondents.
The survey makes it possible to quantify observations of a qualitative nature. The authors of the notebook have, for example, detected the tendency Login, which can be summed up as the quest for well-being. However, the survey confirms it: 62% of Quebec tourists believe that travel is important for their mental health. This indicates a strong trend.
And, if the trend Accountability in terms of sustainable development is highly supported around the world, the Quebec tourists surveyed say something else. According to the survey, barely 22% of respondents say they are ready to choose accommodation or an activity based on this criterion and only 10% would agree to pay more to offset greenhouse gas emissions during their trip. A job, which is obviously still to be done.
Destination Quebec
Created 30 years ago to monitor tourism trends, the Transat Chair of Tourism at ESG UQAM has set itself the task of promoting the development of Quebec tourism in Quebec. “What interests us is not tourism in the South, or attracting foreigners here, but Quebec tourism in Quebec. The idea is to create an effervescence, a Quebec demand for Quebec ideas, which will attract foreign tourists. »
Since France closed its platform in 2021 Tourism info monitoring, which has not been replaced, the chair is unique in the Francophonie. “A large part of our readers are French, Belgian, Swiss, North African. »
It benefits from sustained funding from Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions and the Ministry of Tourism. “To create a monitoring center like ours, it takes patient investment and donors who want something other than indicators. »
The Chair was built according to a unique model, according to the researcher. It relies on research professionals joined by researchers (rather than the reverse, which is the usual model). “It’s like this because quality global monitoring doesn’t happen with just one person. »
Marc-Antoine Vachon insists on the fact that the Chair does not aim to formulate new tourism concepts. “Our job is to identify existing trends, sometimes very new ones, to assess their importance and to see how they are applicable in Quebec. The challenge is to interpret it correctly to make it useful to SMEs, regional tourism associations and the government. »
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the Duty, pertaining to marketing. The drafting of Duty did not take part.