Professor Haiyan Song was invited to give a presentation on the "Tourism Satisfaction Index for Hong Kong" at the 3rd International Conference on Destination Branding and Marketing held at the Institute for Tourism Studies in Macau on 2-4 December 2009.

Professor Haiyan Song attended the 2nd Conference of the International Association for Tourism Economics, hosted by the Faculty of Economics at the University of Chiang Mai, Thailand on 11-13 December 2009. He presented a paper entitled "Measuring Hotel Performance Using a Game Cross Efficiency Approach".

Professor Kaye Chon attended the 15th Annual Graduate Student Research Conference held in Washington DC, USA, on 7-9 January 2010.

Mr Paul Penfold presented a paper entitled "Virtual Communities of Practice: Collaborative Learning and Knowledge Management" at the 3rd International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (WKDD 2010) held in Phuket, Thailand, on 9-10 January 2010.

Professor Kaye Chon, Professor Haiyan Song and Dr Qu Xiao conducted an Executive Development Programme for the GHM (Guangdong/Hong Kong/Macau) Hotel General Manager Association on "Hotel Planning and Construction" on 28 January 2010. The following topics were covered:

• Professor Chon: "Development and Positioning of Hotel ICON"
• Professor Song: "Division of Responsibility between Hotel Management Company and Pre-Opening Office" and "Hotel Pre-Opening Forecasts"
• Dr Xiao: "Feasibility Analysis for Hotel Planning"

A number of SHTM staff attended the 20th Annual CAUTHE 2010 Conference organised by the School of Management at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia, on 8-11 February 2010. Professor Haiyan Song was one of the chairs of a concurrent session, and he presented papers entitled "Tourism Demand Forecasting and Aggregation" and "Forecasting the Demand for Hong Kong Tourism: the View of Experts". Professor Adele Ladkin presented a paper entitled "Human Resource Issues and Trends in the UK Conventions and Exhibitions Industry". Dr John Ap presented a paper entitled "A Re-examination and Re-conceptualisation of Residents' Reactions Towards Tourism". Dr Vincent Heung and Dr Deniz Kucukusta co-presented a paper entitled "Barriers to Medical Tourism Development: the Case of Hong Kong".

Professor Rob Law and Dr Norman Au attended ENTER 2010: The 17th International Conference on Information Technology and Travel & Tourism held in Lugano, Switzerland, on 10-12 February 2010. At the conference, Professor Law received the Best Paper Award for his paper entitled "An Analysis of Search Engine Use for Travel Planning". Dr Au presented a paper entitled "The Impact of Culture on eComplaints: Evidence from Chinese Consumers in Hospitality Organizations".