A comparative study for advantages and disadvantages of Istanbul in the world congress tourism market

Sharing of the information in connection with scientific advancements, and necessity of international organizations due to economic developments and socio-cultural relations have accelerated the growth of congress tourism. Its peculiarities such as high economic income, creation of new jobs, multiple effects on other sectors, causing the full tourism season, positive contributions to urbanization process, contribution to image of country and city are the facts that have already been referred to in the previous tourism studies.The demand for the congress tourism, which in fact, is improving with a larger pace than its international counterpart, creates alternative opportunities to varied tourism potential. Congress provide an advertising and development for the tourist congress places and are prestigious, while also are indicators for the success of the country in public management. Congress represent a special kind of tourism. Large cities have many advantages for conferences including accessibility, accommodation, urban amenities and increasingly, as tourism districts are developed attractive physical environments. It is being observed that major cities in Turkey are in an attempt to organize congress, also an infrastructure for accommodation, meeting halls organization experience and marketing is being established. In this study, the place of Istanbul in the world congress market will be evaluated along with its potentials, peculiarities which are necessary for congress tourism in the cities, advantages and disadvantages, conditions of competition in the world congress tourism market compare with other cities which have great share in the congress tourism in the world. Conference and exhibition facilities of Istanbul in each of its districts, changes in the number of visitors, shares and revenues of the congress will be explained and corporate structures and strategies be investigated. This study is a comparative study that compare the Istanbul's potential with respect to too many factors, with other world cities as Barcelona, Stockholm, Brussels, Copenhagen, Helsinki, London, Berlin, Budapest, Madrid, Paris, Lisbon, Prague, Vienna. At the end, strategies and suggestions will be made for development of congress tourism in Istanbul.

Role of Spatial Dispersion of Creative Capital for Understanding Regional Differences in Spain

It has been argued that ‘creative class’ as a source of growth has gained increasing attention in recent years. According to Florida, a main factor in explaining creativity driven growth is the locational choice of creative people. This research investigates the spatial distribution of creative capital and its effects on regional disparities by considering geographic differences of human capital and employment. First we analyze the dispersion of creative capital related with the dispersion of employment, human capital and regional inequalities. Second, this dispersion is tried to be used as a possible factor behind the differences in Spain. There are high regional differences in terms of creative employment endowments and this picture is persistent for year 1996 and 2004. Results indicate that for both 1996 and 2004 creative employment is spatially dependent. Since this finding only gives clues at a very general level (global in this sense) its decomposition can increase the information set regarding the dispersion of creative employment at the local level. Findings also indicate that there are hot spots in mostly the north eastern geography of Spain. Creative capital is spatially unequal. In line with central aim of this research, our central concern is to carry out this discussion towards the relationship between this unequal pattern and general regional differences in Spain. There is similarity between the geographical patterns in regional inequalities and creative employment endowments. According to the objectives, models containing valuable information about regional development differences in Spain are constructed for year 2004. Models show that creative employment is influencing the differences in regional per capita income in Spain. Finally, it is interesting that in the final model, once we control for the human capital development level of the population for each provinces, creative capital (as well as sectoral composition) fails to explain the regional income differences. In short results of the final model should not be regarded as the insufficiency of the creative capital to explain regional differences; rather it should be remarked that human capital development is dominating the impact of the creative capital.

THE ANALYSIS OF RELATION BETWEEN SOCIO-CULTURAL-ECONOMIC AND TOURISM DEVELOPMENT LEVELS OF THE PROVINCES IN TURKEY

It is s common fact that tourism is a leading sector in progress of under-developed and developing regions. Consistent with the policies to ensure tourism variety and spreading tourism activities throught out the country in to the four seasons, efforts to find and develope natural, historical, archeological and cultural resources in different regions of Turkey are continuing. In spite of the various tourism potentials of the cities that are developed in urban scale and socio-economic progress, their tourism development levels are not as required. In this study, the tourism policies followed in Turkey since 1970’s and influence of those policies on the investment distrubition and space are investigated and the socio-cultural and socio-economic reasons underlying the failure of Turkey’s developed cities to reach the required level in the tourism development are stated. Depending on the time, the touristic development levels and socio-economic development levels of Turkish provinces are designated and the relation between them are evaluated.

“Geography of talent and regional differences in Spain”

Tentative empirical evidence suggests that the agglomeration of talent contributes to regional development. However, given that talented people are not evenly distributed across regions, this paper seeks to determine how the concentration of talent affects patterns of regional development. Here, we empirically evaluate the effects of the distribution of talent on regional differences by means of a detailed analysis of the 17 Autonomous Communities of Spain between 1996 and 2004. We hypothesise that regions specialising in strategic sectors that are creative and which can be assumed to enjoy rapid growth in productivity will experience faster rates of development and, in turn, that this concentration of talent will have a positive impact on the region’s economic performance. Thus, we believe that this mechanism can explain the marked regional imbalances in Spain. Our findings confirm that regional differences, measured in terms of GDP per capita and by, - industrial and service- oriented production, are influenced by the Communities’ talent bases as determined by, educational attainment and employment in assumed to be strategic for regional development, inasmuch as these sectors provide economic specialization.Talent, Regional differences, Panel data, Spain. JEL classification: C33, O18, R11, J24.

The tourism as a development investment in less developed regions: network behaviour of different cities

Tourism industry has been used to create new employment opportunities by increasing the business capacity and to provide economic growth in Turkey. But most of the tourism investments have been located in relatively more developed western and southern regions, which are ecologically sensitive coastal areas. It is known that there are important disparities between socio-economic development levels of different regions and tourism industry can be a planning investment in revitalizing the less developed areas. Turkey is a very large country, it has very much climatic regions and natural resources and as it is a place of meeting of many cultures and religions throughout the history, it owns a very rich cultural and archaeological inheritance. In this framework, it is possible to make tourism investments in such fields as urban tourism, sea-sun tourism, winter tourism or religion based tourism. The urban tourism that is able to attract tourists in any season has a very widespread potential in the country and provides us with substantial opportunities for the provinces with only one tourism option such as winter tourism. From 1980s so far, there has been discrete developments thanks to efforts of local governments, the association of tourism investors and the Ministry of Tourism. The Law for Tourism Encouragement enforced in 1982 defined the terms ‘tourism region’, ‘tourism area’ or ‘tourism center’ and provided such concepts with a legal definition and determined the systems of encouragement and means of application in these fields. In establishing these regions, areas and centers, the country has been taken as a whole with its natural, historical, archaeological, socio-cultural and tourism values as well as winter, hunting and water sports, health tourism and religion based tourism potential. But a means to create network by combining different types of tourism and creating a synergy in tourism sector by means of cooperation between the cities has not been followed so far. Combining these different types of tourism and providing cooperation between cities will create a synergy in tourism sector in less developed areas. This study tries to answer the question of which cities can be grouped as a network to cooperate based on tourism industry regarding their tourism potential. In this study using cluster analysis and factor analysis cities are grouped according to their socio-economic development levels. The results of cluster analysis indicate that western-southern, middle-northern, and eastern-southern regions are three major development levels. According to the factor analysis, the provinces grouped in 4 different levels of development in relation to different factors. These spatial settings in Turkey’s geography show as to which regions would respond the investments to be made in a shorter period. As the country is very large, the attractive points with a high tourism potential, other than those in the developed regions should be determined and a synergy between the settlement zones should be established in an effort to increase the productivity. It would be possible to coordinate the infrastructure investments to take place in the cities and to define the short, medium and long-term investments with this study.

Geography of talent and regional differences in Spain

Tentative empirical evidence suggests that the agglomeration of talent contributes to regional development. However, given that talented people are not evenly distributed across regions, this paper seeks to determine how the concentration of talent affects patterns of regional development. Here, we empirically evaluate the effects of the distribution of talent on regional differences by means of a detailed analysis of the 17 Autonomous Communities of Spain between 1996 and 2004. We hypothesise that regions specialising in strategic sectors that are creative and which can be assumed to enjoy rapid growth in productivity will experience faster rates of development and, in turn, that this concentration of talent will have a positive impact on the region’s economic performance. Thus, we believe that this mechanism can explain the marked regional imbalances in Spain. Our findings confirm that regional differences, measured in terms of GDP per capita and by, - industrial and service- oriented production, are influenced by the Communities’ talent bases as determined by, educational attainment and employment in assumed to be strategic for regional development, inasmuch as these sectors provide economic specialization

Location Patterns of Creative Capital and Regional Disparities in Spain

The creative class as a source of growth has been afforded increasing attention in recent years. However, creative people are not distributed evenly across space, tending rather to concentrate in particular locations. The location decisions of these creative people have been forwarded as a significant factor in accounting for regional disparities in growth and development (Florida, 2002; Fritsch and Stuetzer, 2009). Inspired by the ongoing debate surrounding the creative class theory, this study investigates the spatial distribution of creative capital and its links with regional disparities by examining the geographical divergence of provincial income in Spain. Our findings indicate that although provinces with low levels of creative capital around 1996 experienced an increase in their creative employment in the years leading up to 2004, they still lag behind the northern (and, in particular, the north-eastern) provinces of Spain. More interestingly we report strong spillover effects among the leading and lagging provinces. This spatial pattern of creative capital also accounts for the north-south divide in Spain. Thus, our empirical evidence shows that the provinces with high levels of creative capital in northern Spain are more developed in terms of provincial income even when controlling for other determinants of the process, including industrial development, regional spillover effects and human capital development

Geography of Talent for Understanding Regional Disparities in Spain

Tentative empirical evidence suggests that the agglomeration of talent contributes to regional development. However, given that talented people are not evenly distributed across regions, this paper seeks to determine the role of talent for furthering our understanding of regional disparities in Spain. Here, we empirically evaluate the effects of the distribution of talent on regional differences by means of a detailed analysis of the 17 Autonomous Communities of Spain between 1996 and 2004. The static and non-spatial panel data models are constructed. The unit of analysis is NUTS2. Our findings confirm that the economic performance indicators point to the significant positive impact of talent on regional economic activity. The concentration of talent plays a crucial role in accounting for regional differences. Based on a preliminary analysis of the dispersion in employment and production figures among the Autonomous Communities, the performance of Spain’s outperformers and underperformers is clearly not uniform