The conference has taken place between Wednesday 22 to Friday 24 October 2014 on the premises of the Budapest College of Communication and Business’s Nagy Lajos Király Campus, which has modern facilities and good technology.
The conference has been organized by 2q Ltd (as ATLAS member) in cooperation with the Tourism Observatory for Health, Wellness and Spa and the Budapest College of Communication and Business. BKF is the only university of applied sciences in Hungary that has been running a specialization in Health Tourism for over 10 years. BKF’s BA in Tourism and Catering programme has a specialization in MICE tourism with some 100 students every year. These students provided the local DMO staff for the event and the Catering School of BKF was responsible for the meals.
Conference themes
The main theme was: Tourism, Travel and Leisure – Sources of Wellbeing, Happiness and Quality of Life?
In the last some 5 years, wellbeing, happiness and quality of life were key concepts that have been influencing both academic and industry discussions and development. More and more studies and reports tried to provide insights to these rather complex phenomena. It was widely anticipated, but not often discussed or proved, that tourism, travelling and leisure can play leading roles to improve one’s wellbeing, happiness or quality of life. This conference provided a platform for researchers and industry representatives to discuss the ways ahead how travel, tourism and leisure can contribute to wellbeing, happiness, and quality of life.
Main topics of the conference were:
- Cities, events and quality of life
- Happiness and quality of life of hosts and guests
- Creating and managing happy tourist experiences
- Destination management and marketing: health, medical and wellness destinations
- Tourism, landscape and quality of life
- Tourism, social media and quality of life
- Health and tourism, and medical interventions
- Healing and tourism
- Holism and tourism
- Industry developments aiming at the improvement of the wellbeing of travellers (e.g. airlines, cruises)
- Local and regional wellbeing concepts: development and use in tourism
- Marketing health, wellness, medical and spa tourism
- Slow food, slow cities, slow tourism
- Social tourism as means of improving wellbeing
- Spas and tourism and hospitality
- The importance of sustainability and CSR for quality of life
- The role of service quality in improving tourists’ happiness
- The role of tourism and leisure in creating and improving wellbeing and happiness
- Tourism, leisure and hospitality promoting and improving wellbeing of guests/customers
- Tourism impact management for improved wellbeing and quality of life
- Volunteer tourism
- Wellness, tourism and hospitality