The Quorum Magazine - October 2001

The Secrets of their Success

The Cairns Convention Centre bas been operating for five years but don’t expect any birthday celebrations in the near future.  They’ve been too busy to even consider it. 

“We spent the first two years getting the operation established and it was quite a challenge to create a world-class purpose-built convention centre outside a major capital city,” said Geoff Donaghy, Managing Director of the Cairns Convention Centre.  “So we really concentrated no just on getting our operation right, our catering, technical and AV to be as good as our clients would expect anywhere in the world, but to do it in a very unique, friendly tropical way.  Tropical hospitality is what we offer here and certainly the feedback from clients is that we’re doing just that”.

Is safe to say that the creation of the Cairns Convention Centre has revolutionized the conference industry in far north Queensland.  Initially, it opened up the region to national conventions that had been unable to visit Cairns due to the large delegate numbers.  Then, far quicker than expected, the international conventions stared to stack up as did the accolades.

Last year, the Centre proudly handled 28 major national and international meetings.  A very large proportion of the international events were being held for the first time in Australia.

As Mr Donaghy suggests, there are reasons for the Cairns Convention Centre’s success.

“What we’re on about is the success of our clients.  And not all convention centres set out to do that.  Certainly five to six years ago, when we started putting our strategies together, we detected a very strong perception in the marketplace that convention centres were seen as big institutional places, very impersonal, and very hidebound by policies and rules.  We didn’t was to just break down that perception, we wanted to smash it.  So we took a very personal approach”.

It’s a strategy that, by all accounts, works well for them.  And will continue to work in the future.

October 2001

For More Information:

Geoff Donaghy
Managing Director
Cairns Convention Centre
Telephone: 07-4042 4200
Facsimile: 07-4052 1152
Email:  gdonaghy@cairnsconvention.com.au