会展资料

Lecture 1 The Definition and FormatIdentifying Conference, Expositions and MeetingsAs cities became the hub of activity for geographic regions and as transportation from location to location improved, the activity to gather for the discussion of common interest became more prevalent. Trade associations as well as professional, fraternal and religious organizations assembled to address issues relevant to their membership.Increased association activity led to the need for more meetings among association members. In 1914, the industry founded its first professional organization in the form of International Association of Convention and Visitor Bureau (IACVB).At the very beginning, hotels were not designed to host groups and basically had no desireto play an active role in this very dynamic segment of the industry. It was not until hotel chains, such as Holiday Inn,Sheraton,Hilton,Marriott and Hyatt,began recognizing the importance of meetings, conventions and expositions to their economic well being that hotels solicited group business. These chains took the purely functional meeting facilities of the1950s and built upon the concept and worked with the meeting planners and association executivesto design state of the art meeting facilities fashioned to promote meetings, conventions and expositions.Today, a major source of revenue for the tourism industry comes from the meeting, convention and exhibition segment of the industry. It has become an exciting and lucrative segment of the hospitality industry.A meeting is a conference, workshop, seminar or other event designed to bring people together for the purpose of exchanging information. Meetings do not include exhibits. An exposition is “an event designed to bring together purveyors of products, equipment and services in an environment in which they can demonstrate their products and services to a groupof attendees at a convention or trade show.” When meetings are combined with expositions, theevent is called a convention.Histoiically, the meetings, conventions and expositions industry has mirrored the changesin the overall hospitality industry. As the hospitality industry saw great increase in expenditures, meetings, conventions and expositions experienced great growth as well. With themany changes the hospitality industry has undergone in the past years, the importance of meetings, conventions and expositions has become more recognized. The need to communicate with one anotherface to face has been the driving force behind the growth of this industry.There are four major components of the conventions industry: planners and the groups they represent, host facilities, services and exhibitors. Planners are individuals or groups thatplan meetings, conventions and expositions. Planners fall into a number of categories. Thereare corporate meeting planners who work exclusively for a corporation,association meeting planners who were exclusively for an association, or independent meeting planners who contractout their services to both associations and corporations. Association management companies aswell as travel agencies are also becoming more active in planning meetings, conventions and expositions.Services refer to all those individuals and organizations that provide support for the meetings, conventions and expositions segment of the industry. Service suppliers include, butare not limited to, ground handlers, destination management companies, entertainers, decorators, transportation companies, attractions and tour guide companies.Exhibitors are financially intertwined with all segments of the meetings, conventionsand expositions industry. They provide much of the revenue needed for planners to hold meetings, conventions and expositions.What is the meeting or convention format? Simply put, it is the program format.Are we going to have general session, workshop, forum, symposium, seminar, panel, a fishbowL debate, colloquium or role-play? With today's technology and that our audience may be international and may not be able to travel to the meeting or convention, should we do webcasting? First, let us look at all the different formats that meetings and conventions can be held. General session, as its name suggests, is open for the general assembly. This means everybody. Dependingon the size of your group, you need to be sure to have the room set so that the entire group can see the speaker.A workshop is more for skill learning although knowledge is also transferred. For the most part, a workshop is very hands-on, where the attendees will actually have to work on a project,or try out a product, or make something. Due to the nature, it is quite intense. It is not likea general session that you are sitting in a room with several hundreds or thousands of people. The attendees will have more interaction with the workshop facilitator. Therefore, most workshops are for a small number of people.Although panel, symposium and forum all involve a small group of speakers discussing a certain topic, there are slight differentiations among the three. And if you want to achieve one result or another, you will need to choose the correct format. Remember panel with the “p”for peers. In a panel discussion, the speakers or panel members interact directly with each other on the panel. There is no audience interaction. In a symposium, remember the “s” for speeches. Each speaker will take turn and make a short speech on the topic at hand. There isno interaction among the speakers, nor is there any interaction with the audience. It is simplya series of speeches on the subject. For forum, remember the “f” for feedback. In this case, there is audience interaction with the speakers and also speakers interacting with speakers. There is feedback because there is a designated period of time when the audience can ask questionsto the speakers. Therefore, depending on whether the desired outcome is more discussion in natureor strictly information dissemination, you will choose one means over another.A colloquium is similar to a forum in that there is interaction between the audience and the speakers. However, in this case, the audience is represented by a group of three to four people versus having the floor open to the entire audience. An advantage of this method is that you can achieve a more controlled environment when it comes to questions asked and the time used. Sometimes, it is quite difficult to stop the feedback process when there is a line of audience who wants to ask questions but there is only five minutes left. If you have a groupof three to four people representing the audience, you can control the number of questions each can ask so that representation is taken into consideration but the time constraint can alsobe observed.A fishbowl is quite a unique method of presenting an issue for discussion, It is normallyset up with six to eight people, forming into a circle on the stage or in the middle of the room. Also, there is an empty chair in that circle. As observers, attendees are not allowedto speak. Only the people in the fishbowl are allowed to speak. If an attendee wishes to voicehis or her opinion, he or she will need to walk up to the fishbewl and take that empty seat. When the opinion is rendered or the point is made, the attendee needs to go back to his or her chair. There is also a facilitator who may be part of the fishbowl or he or she may be just walking around to make sure that the procedures are followed. Since the majority of the audienceis watching the functioning of this circle of people, hence the name "fishbowl" as if you are watching your fish in the fish tank or a fishbowl.Debates occur when there are two people or two teams presenting their arguments for or against the issue at hand. Should we raise prices on our services? Is the new product being developed well for the company? What is the state of the industry? Are we in the recovery modeas yet? What is the impact of a new government policy on tourism? Should a country put a bidfor the Olympic Games ? Any issue that has two sides is ripe to be used in a debate format.A debate is good because it looks at both sides and thus provides the audience's differentviewpoints for them to make up their mind regarding the issue. Often, debate may result in the improvement of an idea or process because its weaknesses are exposed.One may not think of using role-play in a meeting. However, depending on the topic at hand, role-play can illustrate an issue very well. The Asian American Hotel Owners Association used role-play at their annual convention to demonstrate the issue of arbitration and mediation between franchisers and franchisees rather than taking such issues to court. It was a huge success because the role-play was very well planned and all the issues of arbitration such as how the lawyers work with the arbitrators and how they then work with their clients were all illustrated step by step. There was also a narrator to give the background and facts of the case.With today's technology, webcasting may present itself as a format of a meeting or convention that you may want to consider. Webcasting uses a technology known as streaming medias.In simple terms, you are essentially video taping a life event to be converted digitally into video signals which are then captured by the computer to be sent to the web server. Once in the server, it can be viewed then or downloaded to be viewed at a later date. This is wonderfulfor members or colleagues, who, for various reasons, cannot attend the convention but still want to take part in certain segments. It is also good because it is done through the web, thereis no time barrier to consider. Webeasting is also very effective for conducting training sessions for a company when it is too costly to fly all associates to a certain location where costs of flight, lodging, board, ground transportation and others will have to be considered. Now, of course, there can always be a mixture of these different methods in the samemeeting or convention, so that the attendees will have a greater experience.I. Difficult words:1. the hub of activity2. prevalent3. fraternal4. economic well being5. solicit6. lucrative----producing much money, profitable7. the hospitality industry8. purveyor---- person or firm that provides some goods or service9. dissemination---- spreading ideas, beliefs widely10. mediationII. 会展英语常见专业机构名称：International Association of Convention and Visitor Bureau (IACVB)国际会议和旅游者管理局ICCA 国际会议协会International Association of Exhibition Management (IAEM) 国际展览管理协会Society of Incentive & Travel Executives 奖励旅游商协会Union of International Fairs 国际展览联盟UIA 国际协会联盟Venue Management Association Asia Pacific Limited (VMA) 亚太地区会展场地管理协会Meeting Professional International (MPI) 国际会议策划人员协会International Association of Professional Conventional Organizers (IAPCO) 国际专业会议组织者协会The Asian American Hotel Owners Association 亚裔旅馆业主会议。