Australian Business Events Operators Cautioned Against Complacency

Australia’s meetings and convention operators have been warned that their global market share is under serious threat.

This was the clear message from speakers at an industry "Trendspotting" forum at the recent Asia Pacific Incentives and Meetings Expo (AIME) workshop in Melbourne.

Following an opening address by The Hon Tim Fisher, Chairman of Tourism Australia, four expert panelists including Roslyn McLeod, Managing Director of Tour Hosts in Australia and Andrew Lee from the Singapore based World Events Organisation outlined global trends and major issues facing the industry.

Robin Lokerman, CEO of Brussels based MCI, one of Europe’s leading association and event management companies, cautioned Australia’s operators that they faced rapidly increasing competition and should not take their international business for granted.

“Australia has done very well in conferences over past years but you now appear to have plateaued and maybe even become complacent, while so many other countries are now working very hard to target this business", Mr Lokerman said.

Panelist, Chairman of the Business Events Council of Australia (BECA) and senior Ogden IFC executive Geoff Donaghy further outlined the rapid growth of world capacity with new convention centres, hotel meeting facilities and major venue expansions under construction in every continent.

“But it is not just this supply growth that we need to be concerned about as so many of our competitor destinations are also undergoing major increases in, and very aggressive mobilisation of their marketing resources".

“Business events and their high yielding attendees are now the priority visitor target for many countries and as individual Australian operators we are increasingly coming up against whole of destination alliances involving not just national tourism offices, but also economic and industry bodies, national airlines and city and provincial governments".

“So if Australia is not going to lose hard earned international market share we really do need to start matching these aggressive collaborative strategies with some urgency", Mr Donaghy said.

The "Trendspotting" forum was chaired and facilitated by industry pundit Elizabeth Rich on behalf of AIME, an annual event in Melbourne attracting over 3,000 exhibitors and visitors from Australia and overseas working in the business events industry.

ENDS

For further information, contact:

Elizabeth Rich, Executive Director, Business Events Council of Australia - 0414 969 140

Greg Adermann, Group Communications Manager, Ogden IFC - 0419 729 972

14 June 2006