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Business events: What are they really worth?
MELBOURNE – The chairman of the Business Events Council of Australia (BECA), Geoff Donaghy, has delivered a critical assessment of the state of the industry.
He said the business events industry in Australia had reached “a fork in the road†and urgently needed a new direction to regain the global standing it enjoyed at the start of the decade.
He maintained that business events had to be assessed on their total contribution to the nation’s well being rather than just what they produced in tourism dollars.
“We talk about our trade fairs, conferences and meetings being worth billions of dollars to the nation, but that’s just in what delegates and attendees spend on hotels, meals, entertainment and associated expenses,†Donaghy said.
“The great, untold story is the many billions more these hotspots of knowledge exchange, network building and ideas generation produce in terms of professional development, technological and scientific advancement and, most importantly in Australia’s case, innovation, creation and dissemination.
“We need somehow to put a figure on that before we can even begin to appreciate the real importance of the industry and to arrest the alarming slide that has seen Australia slip from fourth to 14th in the International Congress and Convention Association’s world rankings for international conferences in less than a decade.
“And it is probably no coincidence that during the same period Australia has slipped from fifth to 18th in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index,” Donaghy added,
BECA, which has called on the Federal government to inject $20 million into a fund to help organisations bid to host international business events in Australia, has released a new report prepared by University of Nottingham professor Leo Jago and Victoria University professor Margaret Deery.
Among recommendations from the report is one that awareness is raised within government and industry about the “beyond tourism†benefits and potential of business events.
Joyce DiMascio, head of Business Events Australia, said the events industry globally was “not good at telling our story – but we’re getting betterâ€.
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