BESydney commits to Asia market

Business Events Sydney will ramp up its investments in Asia after achieving record success with Asian businesses during the 2011-2012 financial year.

BESydney secured 103 business events worth about $225.6 million to the NSW economy in the 2011/12 financial year, marking a 21% increase on the previous year.

Significant gains were also seen in BESydney’s Asian business, which secured a record 33 events worth $91 million over the same period.

With the figures representing the best ever recorded in the Asia market, BESydney chief executive Lyn Lewis-Smith vowed to step up investments to the “expanding” Asian business.

“We are proactively pursuing the opportunities that exist with savvy organisations in South and North Asia,” she said. “Opportunities for the business events sector in Asia continue to grow, and concurrently so does BESydney’s success in this market.

With two major events from Asia worth $3.3 million already secured for the 2012/13 financial year, Lewis-Smith signalled a shift in the business events landscape.

Noting that traditionally long lead times for association business were now reduced to a “matter of months” for many corporate incentive programs, she said operators were being forced to adapt.

“This shift in event delivery times is changing how we operate in terms of both bidding and supporting clients throughout the event lifecycle,” she said. “It’s also changing the way our leading event suppliers need to respond to client needs.”

Coining the shift as an “interesting period of change”, Lewis-Smith promised to stand by the burgeoning market, maintaining that it was “destined to grow”.