But the business outlook in the second quarter of 2008 is significantly less certain than it appeared just six months ago, and the only safe prediction right now is that there are more speed bumps likely in the short term.
Nonetheless, the fundamentals are good for the Australian meetings sector, despite some areas of concern. Event management has become a “hot” career choice in its own right, with university and TAFE colleges across the country offering a wide variety of courses.
Meetings & Events Australia, which has more than 1700 members nationally, is now a registered training organisation, with some of the country’s top companies such as Accor Hotels and Virgin Blue putting significant numbers of its people through the various accredited courses now on offer throughout Australia.
According to some commentators, there is an immense bank of “human capital” that has coalesced around the meetings industry since the early 1990s. People like Leigh Harry at MECC in Melbourne, Ton van Amerongen at SCEC in Sydney, Robert O’Keeffe at BCEC in Brisbane, Elizabeth Rich at BECA, Jon Hutchinson at SCVB and Sandra Chipchase at MCVB are just some of the many who have invested time and energy at local and international levels to ensure Australia reached the critical mass it now enjoys.
We cannot underestimate how much their visibility and reputations have helped drive new infrastructure, marketing efforts and inspired the entry into the industry of a new generation of high calibre executives in the making.
True, we no longer hog the limelight with regard to the number of international events we host. The explosion of new venues in emerging destinations will dilute the pool of available meetings, and one also has to bear in mind there is an ever-growing thirst on the part of delegates to discover new destinations and their attendant business and professional opportunities. The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries are just the tip of the iceberg.
What the provision of world-class convention centres, secondary conference venues, exhibition space, hotels, transport services and competent meeting managers have given Australia is a level of credibility, meaning that international associations that do their homework properly are virtually assured of a successful meeting.
This is no trivial thing. The new convention centre in Melbourne which opens next year will see national and international association meetings account for some 75 per cent of its business.
“We are a resilient industry and if a conference is well organised and promoted the delegates will come,” explains Melbourne Exhibition & Convention Centre CEO, Leigh Harry.
“We’ve weathered all sorts of ups and down over the years and delegates will come for that face-to-face encounter if the program is good.”
Mr Harry is well-placed to comment. He’s the President of ICCA, the world’s leading organisation for the association industry. He travels and consults extensively and sees enough to know his venue and city has to be at the absolute cutting edge if it is to prosper in the international market.
While the majority of meeting organisers and managers are probably not involved in the international meetings sphere, there is, nonetheless, an absolute imperative that the inbound traffic continues to flourish. This brings in the “fresh” money that bolsters the argument for ongoing improvement to the country’s collective infrastructure and the job creation that the meetings industry provides the Australian economy.
There’s also the intangible benefits that international delegates bring. Their ideas can become infused into the many centres of excellence which proliferate in the cities where meetings are held. The biotechnology sector in Melbourne and wider Victoria is a case in point. Geoff Donaghy is another Australian taking this country’s expertise in venue and event management to the world. A little more than 10 years ago he was the opening general manager of the Cairns Convention Centre, which was a global pioneer in the construction of conference and exhibition venues which minimised their environmental footprint.
He also established the CCC – essentially a secondary convention centre – as a significant regional player in the Asia Pacific, securing a track record of international meetings which would normally go to a state capital.
Today Donaghy is running the convention centre division of AEG Ogdens, a multi-national convention centre management company with centres in Brisbane, Cairns, Darwin (soon to open) and Kuala Lumpur. A centre is under construction in Doha, Qatar, and plans are coming together for major initiatives in other parts of the Middle East and India. This will create significant opportunities for a well trained and motivated Australian events professional looking for some expatriate experience.
Melbourne has it well in hand, but the lack of hotel development in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth has significant potential to stunt the growth of the business tourist market in this country.
It matters not if low airfares make the cost of travelling to a conference quite incidental if there’s no room to be had at an affordable price. Sydney will have just one five-star hotel built this decade – the Pullman at Sydney Olympic Park – and with rates and occupancy levels sky high at certain times of the year, the only people smiling right now are the hotel owners and management companies.
Perth has a similar situation and this is being exacerbated by a skill shortage in the construction sector due to the boom conditions being experienced in the resources industry. The city has a top class convention centre and it would be tragic if its potential was degraded by a lack of qualified personnel and an accommodation squeeze.
Elsewhere in this issue you will read of the massive impetus being given to the environmental and sustainability issues within the conference and events industry. It certainly was front and centre at this year’s AIME trade show in Melbourne and no doubt it’s creating many a career in consultancy. It’s going to be a challenge for everyone in the events business to distinguish between the genuine and what could be expensive hot air.
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