Back to business events down under
MARTIN FULLARD , CMW EDITORIAL DIRECTOR , SAT DOWN WITH ROBIN MACK , EXECUTIVE GENERAL MANAGER FOR COMMERCIAL AND BUSINESS EVENTS AT TOURISM AUSTRALIA , TO DISCUSS THE AUSTRALIAN MICE INDUSTY ’ S EMERGENCE FROM THE PANDEMIC
W hat ’ s the key date Australia opened for business events again and restrictions were eased ? We announced that international borders were opening on the 7 February and that came into effect on the 21 February . Initially visitors had to have a PCR test to get in , and that changed from 18 April . So now there ’ s no pre-testing , you just need to be double vaccinated .
Tell me about how the government has supported the industry throughout the pandemic ?
Our context is a government marketing agency . We had a number of recovery programmes that we implemented quite quickly when the pandemic hit and the borders were closed .
A big part of it for us was to focus on domestic tourism and business events .
We launched a campaign called ‘ Event here this year ’, which was basically encouraging people to have events in their own backyard . We had a lot of success with that by talking to the corporate decision-makers and getting them to have their events around Australia .
Above : Robin Mack
We launched the latest version of this at AIME , which was all about emphasing the ‘ time is now ’ to get back to face-to-face . It ’ s important for culture and productivity to get back face-to-face .
From an international perspective , what we did to support the industry was stay active in all our markets . Our sector is all about long lead times for conversion , particularly in the association space . We had our bid fund programme that we ’ ve been running since 2018 . If you look back from March 2020 , we ’ ve had 39 big fund wins . For us that subvention programme is working with partnerships , bureaus and industry . The 39 wins are worth over AU $ 250m ( US $ 173m ) to the visitor economy .
How has the business landscape changed ; and what different requests are your clients coming to you with these days ? Sustainability was growing in
18 / CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD / ISSUE 119