This thesis investigates how information and communication technologies (ICT), particularly the World Wide Web (Web), can contribute to the role that Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Conventions, and Exhibitions (MICE) properties play in local economic development (LED). The complex linkages between MICE, ICT and LED, are explored through a literature review, a website audit, in-depth interviews, and a case study from Horowhenua, New Zealand (NZ). The findings reveal that the Web has considerable but as yet largely untapped potential to facilitate linkages between MICE and local economies. Such potential can only be reached through careful planning, and the realisation on the part of managers, developers and planners, that the Web is more than simply a marketing tool, but is also an integral part of attempts to improve internal MICE performance and external links to local development.

This thesis investigates how information and communication technologies (ICT), particularly the World Wide Web (Web), can contribute to the role that Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Conventions, and Exhibitions (MICE) properties play in local economic development (LED). The complex linkages between MICE, ICT and LED, are explored through a literature review, a website audit, in-depth interviews, and a case study from Horowhenua, New Zealand (NZ). The findings reveal that the Web has considerable but as yet largely untapped potential to facilitate linkages between MICE and local economies. Such potential can only be reached through careful planning, and the realisation on the part of managers, developers and planners, that the Web is more than simply a marketing tool, but is also an integral part of attempts to improve internal MICE performance and external links to local development.

This thesis investigates how information and communication technologies (ICT), particularly the World Wide Web (Web), can contribute to the role that Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Conventions, and Exhibitions (MICE) properties play in local economic development (LED). The complex linkages between MICE, ICT and LED, are explored through a literature review, a website audit, in-depth interviews, and a case study from Horowhenua, New Zealand (NZ). The findings reveal that the Web has considerable but as yet largely untapped potential to facilitate linkages between MICE and local economies. Such potential can only be reached through careful planning, and the realisation on the part of managers, developers and planners, that the Web is more than simply a marketing tool, but is also an integral part of attempts to improve internal MICE performance and external links to local development.