According to the vision of the World Tourism Organisation (WTO) and the forecasts of the develelopment of tourism until 2020, tourism will be characteristicly marked by long distance travelling and its increase rate of 5.4 percent, while the volume of travelling within a certain world re-gion will be lower, amounting to 4 percent. Within the scope of in-creasing long distance travelling the forecasts expect the trips to Europe account for approximately 15 percent, while to North and South America volume will amount to 38 percent and to South Asia about 86 percent.

We assume the destinations of travels of foreign tourists in Europe will mostly tend to its central and eastern part, to the extent of 4.9 percent. For Slovakia, in order to participate in this upwards trend to the most possible extent, it has to present to the foreign customers the very interesting and matchless offers that cannot be found anywhere in this region.

Besides the key elements of the Slovak tourism, as for example vacational tourism, cultural tourism, spa tourism, also the congress and conference tourism might play an important role. The results of the research at the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Economics state, that there is much work to be done in the field of construction of the infrastructure (transport links etc./) and superstructure (congress and conference rooms in hotels and other independent building complexes). An immense attention is devoted to the requirement of qualified and highly efficient management in the congress and conference tourism. This requirement is justified primarily by the fact, that the offer has to be prepared as a package of services with the maximum of variability possible in order to satisfy fully the special needs of the orderer of the congress event. For example, a client interested in organizing a conference in a spa town and requesting two big halls and five smaller rooms. The offer should not only reflect the spa town requests, but it should also be designed in conjunction with the structure of the required conference rooms. The basic prerequisite of a successful offer of congress and conference tourism is the use of all available communication channels including internet. The most modern electronic communication channels require prompt reaction to the requirements of the potential customer of a congress event. Just to take an example, the enrolment forms of the congress and conference organiser abroad provide the customers with a wide range of accommodation alternatives or conference rooms presented on the internet websites. These requests should be processed immediately by the seller and give the prospect an early reply. The communication period will be minimized.

In abroad, all these requirements are fulfilled without any difficulties by the central representatives of all entities in question of congress and conference tourism. At the same time these representatives act as marketing coordinators and intermediates between the entrepreneurs in the country in question and the international congress associations, organisa-tions and institutions. Extremely important is also the connection of cooperation between the private, municipal and state sector.

In Slovakia, there is no institu-tion operating as a central representative. The proposal of the Destination Management Company exists already, but its implementation is difficult and slow. ĽUDMILA NOVACKÁ