Determination of the congress participants' importance to the destination characteristics with importance - performance analysis: Comparison of Antalya – iIstanbul

Congress tourism is the type of tourism which includes the provision of services such as accomodation, transportation and catering during business trips. Due to its features such as extention of the tourism season as well as economic gain introduced to the region because of addressing higher income and culture groups in comparison to other types of tourism and successful congresses ensuring the effective promotion of the region in the international market, congress tourism is adding a significant financial and non financial value to the region. This study consists of three main parts. Introduction to congress tourism in the first section is followed by the theoretical information about destination properties, destination competitiveness and destination choice models in the second section. The last section includes findings obtained as a result of the subject research. Research of the study was made among Turkish and foreign participants of the international conferences organized in the provinces of Antalya and Istanbul. As a result of research a number of aspects such as "Meeting and Accommodation Facilities" in Antalya and "Space Capacity of the Meeting and Accommodation Facilities", "Suitability of Conference Facilities", "City Image", "Site Accessibility " "Suitability and Standard of Local Infrastructure" in Istanbul were identified as required characteristics that need to be preserved. For this purpose, resource transfer to the relevant areas should be continued. For Antalya "City Image" and "Climate" and for Istanbul "Outside Entertainment" have been identified as the focus areas according to the congress delegates. Meanwhile, "Government Support", "Outside Entertainment", "Sightseeing and Cultural Attractions" in Antalya and "Commodity Prices", "Government Support" in Istanbul were identified as low-priority features. In other words both the importance and current performance of above stated aspects are low among congress delegates. Features such as "Expense of Transportation", "Expense of Hotel", "Expense of Food", "Site Accessibility" were named as a potential excesses by those surveyed in both destinations. Therefore, the perceived performance of these aspects is high, but the importance is low. As a result of research based on the feedback of the international congress participants conducted in Antalya and Istanbul, the level of competitiveness of Turkish congress tourism and the qualifications of various features presented in related destinations were revealed. By these means the study has contributed to the literature on the congress tourism in Turkey.