Millions of business travels are organized around the world every year. Mostly most business travel falls to European countries. The main goals of the visits of other states in this direction are to hold meetings and negotiations, attend events (seminars, conferences, etc.), participate in international exhibitions, fairs.
The average business tourist is a 35-45-year-old man with a university degree, holding the position of a manager or a leading specialist of a company, ideally fluent in English. The state from which most business trips are made is Germany, where every year more than 5 million Germans organize business tourism both abroad and through the territory of their country.
Among the states that annually host business people, a special position is occupied by Germany, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland. Separately, Belgium, the capital of which is Brussels, is the capital of the European Union. Here, every tenth visit is a business tourism.
On average, the duration of a business tour in a country located on another continent is 13 days, within the region — 6 days and 4 days within the country where the business tourist lives.
A special place in the field of business travel is occupied by the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which have begun to attract business people since the restructuring of public life and the economic system. In 1995, the share of travel to these countries for business purposes was the highest in the world — more than 30%.
The rapid development of business tourism in the Americas. Every eighth visit of the USA, Canada, Mexico is business. In the early 1990s, the development of business tourism in the states took place at different rates. For example, in Canada fifteen years ago, the number of business trips was less than the number of traditional travels, while in Mexico the growth of business trips exceeded that of ordinary tourist visits several times.
The business tourism market in Latin American countries is actively developing due to economic growth and established international trade relations. Businessmen mostly visit Paraguay, Guatemala, Costa Rica. The pace of expansion of business tourism in Africa and the Middle East is characterized by unevenness. Depending on political events in countries, the number of business travelers increases or decreases.
The largest number of business trips to Southeast Asia took place in the 1990s, when every fifth visit was carried out with the aim of fulfilling service obligations. Almost a third of visits fell on Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.
As for the development of business tourism in Ukraine, on average in our country 7 major congress events are held annually, which is 0.1% of the European congress market, according to ICCA (International Congress and Convention Association). At the same time, in Russia this indicator reached 48, in Latvia — 28, Romania — 39. Ukraine is seriously interested in improving indicators — thus, the development of business tourism has become one of the priorities in the framework of the tourism development program until 2022. Now business travel is actively developing in the industrial cities of Ukraine: Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov. In these cities there are all opportunities for the development of this type of tourism, especially after the facilities for Euro 2012 were built. For example, the same metropolitan NSC «Olympic» is actively used for conferences and similar events.