Every year business, cultural and scientific connections between regions and countries are becoming more and more intensive. Business tourism plays an important role in this process. The development of the national economy and its integration into the world market are impossible without business tourism.

Today every fourth person out of ten who leave their homes every year to make trips, both short-term and long-term ones do this due to their official duties. And the whole range of business trips made with various business objectives is called business tourism. Business tourism plays an important role in the development of the economy of any country, assists its integration into the international markets.

The term business tourism is rarely used to denote business trips. Most often the term business travel is used. Instead of such official terms there is also a widely used abbreviation – MICE which exactly reflects the structure of this type of tourism: Meetings – Incentives – Conferences – Exibitions.

Business tourism is a multi–sided phenomenon. The majority of business trips are corporate trips (corporate travel) – both for individual meetings and participation in meetings held by large production and trade corporations.

Business trips connected with participation in congresses, conferences, seminars under the aegis of political, economical, scientific, cultural, religious and other organizations make up about 16% of the business tourism market. Another 11% are trips to commercial and industrial exhibitions and fairs.