Incorporating sustainability in meetings and event management education

Events and other meetings are an important component of the tourism industry. The activities around events and other meetings bring people together and offer communities an opportunity to celebrate and showcase their traditions, culture and way of life. As the major stakeholders in such activities realise the significant economic benefits of holding events and meetings, governments and operators are making significant capital investment in developing the necessary facilities and infrastructure to accommodate this sector of the tourism industry. Whilst the flury of activities has a number of positive economic impacts, such as job creation and increased revenue there are also potential negative consequences. The quality of the economic, social and natural environments in which such activity takes place is at risk. As a result there has been a realisation, particularly by educators and researchers that there is a need to incorporate sustainability into meeting and event management. The Best Education Network (BEST) has addressed this gap by holding workshops for the purpose of identifying objectives that can be used in the development of a short teaching module for sustainable meeting and event management. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the need to incorporate sustainability into meeting and event management; to describe the process used by BEST to identify sustainable meeting and event objectives; and to present the learning objectives that were identified, as a result of this process.