This largest single corporate event for Melbourne, hosted over three weeks in April, had been almost two years in the making, a challenge as much anticipated for its logistics as for the estimated $34.9 million in business generated for the city.
Between April 7 and 25, four waves of 1800 Amway achievers flew in for five days of events then flew out again. It has been likened to the peak of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games influx and it required a special luggage area at Tullamarine airport and a command centre in the city - Amway’s own 200-strong operations team plus an army of Melbournians focused on transportation, accommodation, dining, entertainment and sightseeing.
Event specialist Peter Jones, who produced a series of special Amway World of Light themed dinners, described the event as “by far the largest scale corporate event Melbourne has seen” and he rates Amway as “a highly professional client…they know exactly what they want, and what they don’t want.”
What they wanted was a program that included spectacular gala dinners, world-class entertainment, a large team-building event, visits to regional Victoria, plus a full-day business session. And it had to be repeated four times.
With experience in handling large groups out of China, including other Amway groups, inbound tour operator PTC Express Travel hired more than 100 staff and Mandarin-speaking interpreters for the airport arrivals, departures and for the eight delegate hotels.
The immediate issue of communicating with 1800 Mandarin speakers was managed at the hotels by translated room service menus, mini bar, laundry lists and signage around the hotels. At Crown Towers and Crown Promenade where most delegates stayed, they printed special welcome kits with details on the complex plus a special VIP card, which alerted Crown staff to delegates should they need assistance. Other hotels – Sofitel, Grand Hyatt, Langham, Marriott and Crown Plaza displayed Mandarin signage and offered bi-lingual staff during the event.
With Amway China having previously sent incentive groups to both Sydney and the Gold Coast, Melbourne’s ability to handle the logistics at such a scale was served up its own opportunity to shine.
Its broad streets and efficient traffic systems meant the daily fleet of up to 75 coaches, co-ordinated by Cobb & Co, with assistance of other coach companies, moved seamlessly to and from city hotels, the meeting venue, Melbourne Exhibition Centre, and city shopping tours.
And all this despite Melbourne peak hour traffic and the filming of a Hollywood movie, starring Nick Cave, that had jammed some CBD streets.
Encouraging the groups of Amway distributors to give something back to their host city was Big Stick Adventures, who had the task of staging four of the largest team-building events Melbourne has ever seen. And it succeeded mightily.
Big Stick’s Bret Hollis gathered 200 staff and suppliers to stage four health runs around Melbourne’s famous Botanical Gardens Tan track. He oversaw two days of onsite staff training, provision of Mandarin signage, water stations, even sandwich vouchers for the 5700 delegates, who participated in the health runs and each gave $10 towards a total $57,000 presented to Melbourne children’s charity, Berry Street. Amway president, Audi Wong, said the company was proud to be able to support the children’s charity.
“Amway’s guiding vision is to help people live better lives. Our support of Berry Street and its education programs will assist Australian children to reach their full potential and achieve their goals,” Mr Wong said.
To meet Amway’s requirement for a full-day business session for each group of delegates, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) was re-configured with tiered seating along two bays for its day-long business sessions, which were produced by Staging Connections.
If further evidence of the size of this event was needed, Staging Connections constructed the largest front-projection screen in Australia, a 46 x 6.5 metre screen comprising 12 projectors, 7 Folsom Encore VPs, hard-drive video replay and 14 Watchout computers all running fully digital signals.
Chief operating officer of Staging Connections, Ben Ashton, said the screen was necessary to deliver the required visual impact for the business sessions. These sessions, under the guidance of Amway’s senior AV manager, Bert Li, were capped off by stunning graphics designed in Hong Kong, which added a further professional touch to the event.
Despite being a construction site, MCEC became a glamorous gala dinner venue over four nights through the event. The only hint that anything was different according to event specialist Peter Jones was the “new” entrance to the building, constructed at the rear to allow buses to alight passengers into the exhibition space that had been magically transformed with drapes, chandeliers and light panels.
Back of house a 1500 square metre kitchen had been set up for 90 staff to prepare and plate food from 12 individual serving points. Out front 250 wait staff served four courses in a record one hour and ten minutes.
Designing the menu in conjunction with Amway staff, MCEC food and beverage manager, Frank Burger, finally settled on premium Australian fare, including smoked Tasmanian ocean trout with charred prawns, a sweet corn and truffle soup, roasted crayfish tail with squid ink and crab tortellini and champagne sauce, and a dessert of chocolate and raspberry trifle.
“With Amway and other conferences and events at the centre, April was our busiest month on record. We served 16,000 meals to Amway delegates during their stay and in one day alone we served 4000 people for either dinners or lunches. All food was sourced locally including 3600 lobsters for the Amway dinners,” Mr Burger said.
He described the dinners as “a massive undertaking” because of his brief from Amway to serve four courses in 70 minutes.
“It is not enough to provide faster service, you need to multiply your resources,” he said.
How do you top the entertainment for an incentive group who have already been serenaded by the Vienna Boys Choir, ABBA and entertained by some of the best performers in the world? That was the question facing Peter Jones and his team, whose response was to offer a menu of 40 acts from which a final six were chosen: String Diva, 100% Kylie, sand artist Stefanos Eleftheriadis, aerial performance artists Etherial Arts and Soul Mystique, a magical dance act that combines ancient Russian ‘Quick Change’ and DanceSport.
Themed “World of Light”, the venue echoed a bright, happy and prosperous gala dinner, reward and recognition for the Amway distributors following their year of achievement. It opened with a giant sphere that rolled from the stage, rose above the audience and fixed itself atop the centre of the room to become a point of fantastic lighting effects and Amway branding during the evenings.
A highlight was a group of six to 12 year olds specially formed as the Melbourne Chinese Children’s Choir. They had practised for the previous three months to sing four songs in Mandarin especially for the event.
“The choir was formed at the invitation of Amway and as a result has provided a platform for Australian-born children from China, Malaysia and Hong Kong to learn the Chinese language and culture through singing. We have already had requests for them to sing at other events,” Peter Jones said.
Roving entertainers were popular, engaging delegates with their antics and happily posing for souvenir photographs.
Part of Amway’s recognition program featured highest achievers and honoured guests entering down a red carpet to public acclaim before sitting at a special VIP table.
On the first night of the gala dinners, among the VIP guests was MCVB CEO, Sandra Chipchase. Sandra had been talking about the Amway event for more than 18 months as a great opportunity for Melbourne to showcase its products and services. What the audience did not know was that she had also been studying hard for the past couple of months.
When she stood to speak polite applause soon turned to gasps of delight as Sandra spoke confidently in Mandarin, not merely welcoming Amway China, but emphasising the importance of the Chinese community to Melbourne since they first arrived on the goldfields more than 150 years ago.
Sandra had written the speech, had it translated, and been coached in Mandarin and its many inflections by MCVB Hong Kong staffer Jennifer Tung, even getting a thumbs up from an Amway translator during dress rehearsal.
At the end of four minutes a rousing ovation greeted the speech, which one industry observer described as “gutsy”.
If the gala dinner showcased our finest fare, then regional Victoria gave delegates a taste of dinkum Oz - sheep shearing, blacksmiths, champion working dogs, teams of Clydesdales, bush entertainment and a chance to try billy tea and damper.
Here on Phillip Island Nature Park’s Churchill Island, the site of the first European agricultural activity in Victoria, they were enthralled at the 57-hectare working farm with a glimpse of early Australian settler cottage and farm life.
The open space appealed to delegates, according to Phillip Island Nature Park sales and marketing director, Nicole Hill. She said they enjoyed being able to stroll about the island and got involved in events.
“We were expecting to shear 64 sheep, but so many delegates wanted to have their photographs taken with the shearer, that very few sheep were shorn,” she said.
“Other popular attractions were getting a temporary tattoo of a koala, kangaroo or the Australian flag, feeding the horses or watching the cattle being rounded up.”
Victoria’s number one attraction for the Asian market is the Phillip Island Penguin Parade, and this was true for Amway China delegates as they watched the little penguins scramble up the beach to their dune borrows after dusk.
“They raved about the penguin parade, and were quick to mimic the way the little penguin’s waddle. All the delegates really got involved and enjoyed themselves – it was great fun,” Nicole said.
Sandra Chipchase’ s potted history of the Chinese at the diggings would come to life for delegates during their visit to Sovereign Hill, the recreated 1850s goldfields township near Ballarat. They panned for real gold, toured the underground Red Hill Mine, watched working horses, even shopped colonial-style.
Catering for a sit-down lunch for 1000 delegates at a time, Sovereign Hill’s catering company, Delaware North, needed 230 wait staff, 138 kitchen staff and a significant boost to the food and beverage order, which read: 1260 kg of beef, 840 kg chicken, 1400 kg fruit and vegetables, 1750 litres of orange juice and 2450 litres of bottled water.
The Melbourne Convention & Vistors Bureau pitched for the Amway business, winning it in August 2006. Although the initial numbers suggested were 10,000, 7200 actually materialised. The bureau reckons a return on investment of an estimated $34.9 million in direct and indirect value for the Victorian business events industry.
Amway’s Bert Li has nothing but praise for the bureau and its assistance.
“It took a while to find a venue, but the MCVB provided a list of venues and lots of information. On a three-day visit they took me everywhere, and responded to all my enquiries very quickly.”
Li, who has worked with Amway on all four trips to Australia, first to the Gold Coast in 1999, then Sydney, and the Gold Coast on a second occasion in 2006, says that Australia has the facilities, the attractions, climate and friendly people that make it an attractive destination for Amway China.
“Melbourne is a lovely city, plus it has the venues, hotels and flight capacity that are not available in some other Australian cities. There is a lot of variety in Australia for different experiences such as Churchill Island and Sovereign Hill here in Melbourne,” he said.
PTC managing director, Chris Zhang, said it was the first time he had worked so closely with a bureau.
“We have brought many incentives to Australia and worked with other bureaus, but this time we have been able to sort out many issues in advance thanks to the close working relationship we have had with the MCVB,” he said.
According to Zhang, Melbourne has sent a strong message to other corporates that the city is very suitable for large Asian incentive groups, particularly in terms of air capacity, accommodation, attractions and the quality of services the city can provide.
“Melbourne is another face of Australia. This is what is exciting about Melbourne – it presents itself in a whole new light with a lot of ‘Australian’ experiences,” Zhang said.
With more than 250,000 distributors and 186 retail outlets, Amway China regarded Melbourne as its premier reward for the company’s high achievers this year. It is an event with no upper limit to the number of distributors that can attend and no expense spared, so long as it delivers value for money.
Bert Li echoes the belief of industry-watchers who suggest that having used three Australian destinations, there is no other Australian city capable of hosting Amway China.
Peter Jones agrees there is no other city with the venue flexibility and inbound flight capacity: “I doubt we will see them back here for a number of years…I hear they are chartering a large cruise ship out of Taiwan for next year’s major incentive event.”
Bert Li says: “Australia has a number of the attributes that Amway looks for when selecting a destination such as weather, friendly people, language, facilities, technical expertise, attractions and air capacity.”
Li also believes there are things that destinations could be doing better to attract Amway.
“Flexibility is important when working with Amway. People need to listen and be open to Amway’s requirements and to differences in culture. Suppliers need to accept that they will have to do some things differently than the way they have done them before. We provide suppliers with a brief so that they understand what we want. It is a good experience and a lot of fun to exchange cultures,” he says.
“For example working with Peter Jones Special Events is a lot of fun. I know the whole crew and they are a good team. All the people are passionate about what they do and enjoy their work. This company is quite international in its perspective and willing to listen and be flexible.”
Li also praised the MCEC catering team for its flexibility and positive attitude, Staging Connections for providing consistency of management and contacts with whom he had worked with before, and the MCVB for its expertise in co-ordinating the entire event and assisting with venues and suppliers.
Peter Jones said Amway’s attention to detail, professionalism, and high standards set a benchmark for other corporations.
While the rest of Australia waits to see if Amway China will return, the MCVB is pleased to report it has already won business as a direct result of its success with Amway China… it has secured Amway Indonesia for 700 delegates in 2009.
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