Factors affecting hotel selection of congress organizers and a study on evaluation of congress services: The case of Antalya

International trade and technological developments, which have increased with the globalization process, have led to an increase in congress and conference activities. Every convention is a tourism movement. People come together through congresses and exchange information on a specific subject in scientific fields or professions. Congress tourism has increased rapidly over time in Turkey. From the perspective of Turkey, congress tourism has an important place as a developing tourism type. Turkey, which wants to have an important place in the tourism market and wants to get a share from this market, carries out important activities for the development of congress tourism. Turkey has an important place in congress tourism in Antalya as well as in Istanbul. Congress tourism has a great impact both economically and socially-culturally for each destination. From an economic point of view, it is seen that it brings more income than the world tourism revenues and has a large share in the tourism market. Therefore, congress tourism is considered as a big market and an income-increasing element. Today, it is seen that congress tourism will increase rapidly. For that reason, the quality of the products and services offered in congress tourism is very important. Congress tourism shows that both sector-related and academic studies, which have been emphasized more since 2000, have increased in Turkey. According to ICCA data, Antalya hosted 16 international congress and meeting events and ranked 165th in the ranking (https://www.turizmgunlugu.com/2018/06/13/turkiye-dunya-kongre-ulkeleri-siralamasinda-dususte/Date of access: 24/01/2020). According to the ICCA 2018 annual report, Turkey ranks 225th in the world and 112th in Europe. According to the data announced by the Turk-ish Statistical Institute, the number of visitors coming to Turkey for congresses, meetings and business purposes reached 1 million 780 thousand people at the end of 2017. This data is low-er when facing the last 2013-2015 years. However, in the future, congress experts think that this situation will improve and the number of congresses will increase more. The congress has become one of the most intense tourism types for accommodation businesses as it minimizes the seasonality problem especially and offers the opportunity to sell rooms collectively. Within the scope of the study, it was tried to determine the hotel selection factors of travel agencies in Antalya and the factors of congress organization in Antalya and to evaluate the services they received. For this purpose, a questionnaire was applied to travel agencies operating in Antalya and the results were discussed. The three most important factors affecting the hotel selection of the congress organizers have emerged as the price of the hotels, their rapid response to solve organizational problems, and the hotel image. In addition to these, SWOT analysis was done and opportunities, strengths, weaknesses and threats were investigated.