City marketing and convention bureaus value propositions in the post-covid time

City marketing and convention bureaus value propositions in the post-covid time

The role of convention bureaus across the world is to market destinations and cities.
This paper explores destination marketing in the post pandemic time. It focusses on the
values that convention bureaus, a key actor in the meetings industry, propose to
potential visitors. The concept of value propositions (VPs) is commonly regarded as a
strategic tool for organizations to communicate what and how they will provide benefits
to clients in their offerings of products or services (Payne, Frow and Eggert 2017, Payne
et al. 2020). A value proposition is a central part of the business model. VPs can be
thought of in terms of promises made to clients or to market segments in external
communication (Grönroos and Voima 2013). This calls for an appropriate packaging and
presentation of the values in the communication of organisations (Payne, et al. 2017).
From a strategic perspective, VPs affects the process communicating and delivering
values (Lanning 2020). Previous research of VPs within in tourism studies include value
co-creation and co-destruction in tourism services (Assiouras et al. 2022), value and
tourist brand loyalty (Bose et al. 2022), tourism stakeholder value-co creation (Carrasco-
Farré et al. 2022), value propositions in digitalisation processes (Endres et al. 2020) value
propositions for community building (Butler and Szromek 2019), power in tourism
marketing (Kannisto 2016) and values in experience design (Tussyadiah 2014). The topic
appears however to be understudied from a communication perspective and also with
respect to how unexpected events, such as the pandemic, frame the processes of
communicating values. The aim of this paper is to advance the knowledge about value
propositions socio-cultural dimensions by exploring how benefits for meetings bookers
and visitors are discursively constructed. The study will answer three questions: how is
value proposed in the marketing communication of convention bureaus, and what
professional meetings discourses are formed in the post covid time?
Case, method and theory
Texts and images in the online marketing of 20 convention bureaus (CBs) was collected
between May 2022 and March 2023. Dispersed across five world continents, most CBs
are located in large cities. A CBs main purpose is to increase the number of meetings in
a destination. CBs collaborate with companies in its area to market their offerings, and
they are often a unit of a DMO of a city or a municipality's business department. The
meetings industry increased its activity in the beginning of 2022, when all restrictions
were gradually lifted, and therefore the data constitute an example of marketing that
was planned and executed during a crisis. The material was imported and text-scanned
in NVivo software. Codes were created inductively, by identifying presentations of
benefits in chunks of texts and images that were manually coded as value propositions,
screenshot by screenshot. Inspired by discourse theory (Wetherell et al. 2001), the
second step of the analysis aimed for a more abstract level. The theory was
operationalized by looking for reoccurring expressions used to propose value, terms,
narratives, symbols, metaphors, and images, and by identifying things that are excluded,
and ambiguities in the communication. A set of identified values emerged, as a map of
how convention bureaus on a global level imagine the meetings demand. The analysis
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discusses some vantage points that the CBs depart from. The analytical perspective thus
provides a broad societal interpretation of the themes.
Findings
Two main VP discourses emerged. First, the offering of “The meeting in a destination” is
constructed as place-bound meetings. Place is represented in images of historical
buildings, spectacular nature, or references to place specific professional networks. The
communicated benefits emphasise physical interactions and location in relation to other
places. The place bound discourse constructs an essential need of being and engaging in
interactions and experience place, for successful meetings. The CBs engage in a
placeification of professional meetings.
Second, the “Sustainable meetings” is a morally packaged offering, that is often based
on presenting benefits of ethical concern such as expressions of care for the
environment or displays of certifications and expert lists of wise consumption choices.
This offering thus constructs morally conscious and responsible choices at the center of
a good meeting. Sustainable consumption is constructed as a norm, in this ethicification
of the professional meetings offering. In sum, the representations relate to different
norms like mobility and the ethical. The first emphasises experiences of place, which
partly contradicts the offering of sustainability, The placeification contradicts the
ethicification of meetings, in so far that places require physical infrastructures and
travelling. The ethicification of meetings stress on the other hand travelling as
potentially harmful for the environment. The sustainability theme does not stress less
travelling, it rather suggests alternative forms.
Discussion and conclusions
The communication can be interpreted as formations of new norms emerging in relation
to change in society. The meeting industry has always emphasised the value of a specific
location for meetings, an essential part of the tourism industry business models.
Revenues depend on sold rooms, dinners, and personal service in that place.
Experiences of place requires people to be there. This communication may therefore
seem like a given vantage point. However, digitalisation of society has accelerated
during Covid-19 pandemic and it seems to have paved a way for customer segments that
do not want to, or cannot not travel to a remote destination, for different reasons.
Especially urgent during the pandemic and to some extent still valid, digital meeting
formats are still used. The meeting industry have had to address the question of
mobility, where digital meetings formats could be part of a possible venue in a
sustainable direction. Carbon emissions from aviation is a significant contributor to
climate change while a lot of people around the world go to meetings by plane, on a
regular basis. It may be that the industry addresses these challenges by promoting
sustainable meetings. Hence the communication discursively establishes the meetings
industry as a player within sustainable development. Communication can trivialize
conceptions of sustainable challenges and this study suggests that value propositions
are powerful communicative tools and that value propositions emerge in relation to
change in society.
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