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If the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) is the city’s crown jewel for business events, then it sits atop a mighty tiara as it has been revealed the city has meetings venues with a total capacity of more than 100,000 delegates.
MCEC is barely one year old and has already hosted 701,615 delegates at 704 events to stake its claim as the hub of the city’s vibrant meetings and events industry. Now MCEC, which stretches half a kilometre along the Yarra River, is to be further expanded.
With $17.7 million already budgeted for 2010/11 land acquisition and final design works, it will get more exhibition space needed for the major national and international conventions Melbourne is winning. MCEC has secured 63 major international business events bringing more than 117,500 delegates in addition to 350 large national conventions, plus meetings and seminars booked or planned for more than 280,000 delegates.
Feeding demand is Melbourne Airport, its new passenger concourse the first stage of a $330 million international terminal expansion, with stage two – scheduled for late 2011 – to add more than 5000 square metres of public facilities to Terminal Two.
Venue versatility
It sounds like a ‘perfect storm’ of business event bid success generating a huge demand for infrastructure. But the truth is that this city, at last count, had conference and meetings venues with a capacity for 95,357 delegates – according to a Census of Urban Land Use completed in November 2008, before MCEC (5500 plenary) or Crown Conference Centre (1000 theatre).
The versatility of Melbourne for business events is that it has a range of venues. mice.net requested figures from the Melbourne Convention and Visitors Bureau, which showed the diversity of the Greater Melbourne meetings infrastructure, revealing that organisers are spoiled for choice:
• MCVB has 35 members that can accommodate meetings up to 500 (theatre), including Crowne Plaza Melbourne, The Langham, Lancemore Hill Conference Centre, Airlie Conference Centre and Comme restaurant.
• 19 MCVB members with up to 1000 ( theatre), including Novotel Forest Resort Crewsick, Leonda by the Yarra, Plenty Ranges Arts Centre, Zinc at Federation Square and Crown Conference Centre
• 15 MCVB members with over 1000 (theatre), including Sofitel Melbourne on Collins, Sebel and Citigate Albert Park, Atlantic Group V, Melbourne & Olympic Parks and Rochford Yarra Valley
• Seven MCVB members with over 2000 (theatre), including Crown Entertainment Complex – Palladium Room, Epicure at Melbourne Town Hall, Epicure at the Arts Centre, Marriner Theatres – Regent Theatre; and
• Four MCVB members with over 3000 (theatre), including Etihad Stadium, Melbourne Showgrounds, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre and Royal Exhibition Building.
New developments
Australia’s largest hotel, the 658-room, $300 million Crown Metropol, opened in April 2010. Celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsay’s Maze restaurant and grill is in-house, but he’s also responsible for room service. Popular already is the unique sky bar and terrace on level 28 atop the hotel.
Earlier this year Crown Conference Centre was extended to cater for up to 840 (theatre) and to provide the option of up to 19 concurrent rooms on the same floor. It now offers event organisers a choice of two plenary rooms, a pillarless conference hall and a 600-seat Promenade Room.
Further up the Yarra, the arts precinct gets a boost with Hamer Hall undergoing a $128.5 million redevelopment to make it ‘greener’ and open it up to Southbank and the Yarra River. The Hamer Hall project is the first stage of the Southbank Cultural Precinct Redevelopment scheduled for this year.
Increasingly popular for corporate events is Melbourne’s nearby Recital Centre, an acoustically-tuned venue for instrumental and vocal performances that also offers a range of meeting spaces. Apart from the main 1000-seat Elisabeth Murdoch Hall and its spacious foyers, the tessellated timber-lined Salon is perfect for a corporate event – a concert for up to 130 or a reception for 180.
Despite an apparent move down the Yarra for meetings, the traditional meetings hotels along the leafy Paris end of Collins Street, many of them major marques, are unmoved.
Grand Hyatt Melbourne completed a $45 million redevelopment of its public spaces recently and this month (June) opens its new Premium suites, Grand Club Lounge and Club Floors. The full refurbishment including furniture, carpet and bathroom fixtures will be completed by 2011.
Meanwhile with its dedicated meetings floor, Grand Hyatt remains committed to the meetings market, branding itself Melbourne’s premier dedicated MICE hotel and offering until July 31, free room hire in Savoy, Mayfair, Connaught, Grosvenor or Bristol. Reduced rates apply in the premium events space, the residence, plus a choice of accommodation vouchers that can be used for an overnight stay in a newly redesigned Grand Suite King Room or a range of fantastic upgrades, such as beverage and canapé packages.
The Ascott Group is investing AUD$136.2m in the development of a 380-unit serviced residence in Melbourne’s CBD. Citadines Melbourne on Bourke will be Ascott’s first Citadines in Australia and was due to open on July 1, offering a business centre and conference facilities.
Arguably Victoria’s best-known club, RACV City Club in Bourke Street is convenient and welcoming with two levels of meetings and function rooms, exhibitor space and a fully-equipped business centre: Level 17 seating up to 500 can be themed and features an outdoor terrace with breathtaking views over Melbourne and Port Phillip Bay; Level 2 offers six rooms with natural light, or a combination of rooms with total seating capacity of 180 guests.
Complementing the City Club, RACV has an impressive portfolio of resorts, most offering a golf/meetings option: Healesville Country Club, Yarra Valley; Cape Schanck Resort, Mornington Peninsula; Inverloch Resort, South Gippsland and Royal Pines Resort, Gold Coast.
New and improved on St Kilda Road
Melbourne’s newest luxury hotel group – Art Series Hotel Group – will shortly open its third property – The Blackman with 209 rooms and suites on St Kilda Road. It has The Cullen in Prahran with 115 suites and The Olsen in South Yarra with 229 five-star suites, a day spa, two restaurants and spectacular glass bottom pool.
Nearby along St Kilda Road, the designer five-star boutique hotel, Royce, has announced a multi-million dollar development expected to begin in 2011. The purchase of a 500 square metre property next door will add 80 contemporary rooms to the existing 100, plus a luxurious spa centre. The development is expected to be completed within 12-18 months. Event space in the current ballroom will be extended to seat 250 (banquet).
Sports infrastructure
Despite the ‘storm’ in rugby circles, Melbourne’s Olympic Park precinct is abuzz. The newly opened $268 million AAMI Park rectangular stadium hosts soccer, rugby league and rugby union matches. It has a capacity of more than 30,000, a sports campus, four-lane 25m lap pool, 24 corporate suites with exclusive internal and external seating, and a dining room seating 1000.
The state has invested $363 million to fully enclose the 6000-seat Margaret Court Arena with a retractable roof and additional seating, which could see it used more for business events.
To some event planners, being out of the CBD is a positive and Rydges Bell City provides the perfect alternative to city congestion with its 27 hectares complex: 220 rooms of three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half star accommodation and 21 conference spaces with more than 2300 square metres of diverse and flexible indoor and outdoor space for up to 2500 guests.
Bell City’s Lochlan McLachlan says location is a winner for the property: “We’re only 15 minutes from the city yet very self-contained with 600 car spaces, convenience store, newsagency, onsite laundry, restaurants, bars and recreation facilities, so there’s less chance of losing your delegates.”
 
Melbourne recently hosted the world’s first event of its kind to raise awareness of the impact parks have on your health. Held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC), Healthy Parks, Healthy People was the brainchild of Parks Victoria, attracting more than 1000 delegates from 35 countries.
Parks Victoria chief executive Mark Stone says it chose to host the event at the MCEC because of its convenient central and attractive location, bike tracks, flexibility, the MCEC’s willing, cooperative staff and its environmental standing.
As the first convention centre in the world to achieve a ‘6 Star Green Star’ environmental rating for its innovative sustainable design and operational features, the environment is something the MCEC takes seriously and has translated into every aspect of its operations.
For the Healthy Parks, Healthy People gala dinner, the MCEC’s in-house kitchen team created a menu which included some of the many sustainable Victorian producers and vineyards it partners with, including salmon and caviar from Yarra Valley Salmon, one of the only freshwater aquaculture farms in the world to use a completely natural method of rearing its salmon and harvesting the roe; Red Hill Cheese’s goats’ cheese, made using free-range goats’ milk which is free from genetically modified organisms, artificial stabilisers and preservatives; and De Bortoli Rococo blanc de blanc sparkling wine, which follows strict environmental practices using biological farming in the Yarra Valley.
 Parks Victoria project officer Elisia Dowling said the food was certainly one of the highlights for delegates.
She said the building itself also set a great mood, with Parks Victoria opting to use ‘green power’, one of the MCEC’s many environmental initiatives for clients which sees equivalent power purchased from a renewable energy.
“The design of the building with lots of natural light and the large glass façade really helped the vibe and set the mood for those attending,” she said.
She said having the venue right on the river and surrounded by hotels, restaurants and bike trails was also good for the wellbeing of delegates.
“We had bikes right out the front, and because the venue is situated in such a great location, the bikes were well utilised.”
Her sentiments were echoed by keynote speaker, Dr William Bird who is strategic health advisor to Natural England, and says verbatim comments from several delegates were that ‘it was the greatest conference they’ve ever been to”.
He said when you have discussions on obesity, it’s vital to have venues like the MCEC where delegates can easily walk to their hotel and any other facilities they may need.
Dr Bird is proposing to take the event to London in 2012 but said “it’ll be a hard act to follow. I am in awe of what has been achieved here.”
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