The role of congress tourism in Cracow in the years 2008-2009

The main topic of this paper is to present the scale and nature of congress tourism in Cracow in the years 2008 and 2009.Methodology: The empirical material for the analysis was the result of the research prepared and conducted in Cracow in 2009 by the researchers of the Tourism Department of the Cracow University of Economics. The questionnaire was addressed to owners of venues possessing the necessary infrastructure for business meetings in Cracow. The rate of return was 50.42%.Main contributions: The paper consists of two parts: the introduction, where theoretical issues are explained, the essence of congress tourism is presented and the location of congresses in the world is specified. The second part is of an empirical nature, in which the research results are presented. The analysis concerns a number of congresses in Cracow, the amount of their participants, the structure of the venues hosting congresses and the structure of revenues generated by congress tourism, as well as an institutional profile of clients ordering congresses in Cracow.Conclusions: The results obtained allow us to conclude that congresses in Cracow in the years 2008 - 2009 gathered 5% of all MICE tourism participants. Moreover, according to an opinion expressed by experts from the business tourism sector, the role of congress tourism is going to increase in the future