Tourism Australia is stepping up its support of the business events sector by boosting its marketing efforts by 20% each year.
Speaking at the Meetings and Events Australia (MEA) national conference in Sydney yesterday, Tourism Australia managing director Andrew McEvoy highlighted the importance of building delegate numbers to Australia to boost overall visitor expenditure.
Business events are currently contributing $8.5 billion to the Australian economy each year, he said, but this could be boosted to around $16 billion by 2020 with further support.
“It’s all about finding corporate end users who want to bring their clients to Australia,” he said, noting that a 20% boost to marketing spending would encourage meeting planners to bring their business to Australia.
“We have always struggled with time, cost and distance [in drawing international visitors] but adapting our campaign will help us to increase visitor numbers and edge closer to our goal to double overnight visitor expenditure to $140 billion by 2020,” he said.
McEvoy also flagged the importance of social media in achieving this goal.
“Word of mouth has always been the best tool, and now through social media, it’s as though word of mouth is on steroids. Telling our story through social networks is an important thing,” he said.
McEvoy also highlighted a shift in the market, noting that Asia was becoming “much more important” to Australia. While traditional long haul markets such as Europe, the UK and the US would continue to play an important role in the business events sector, McEvoy said Asia would dominate any marketing efforts in the future.
“We’re facing an industry that’s in transition. Asia is becoming much more important to us, so we’re spending more time, effort and resources there,” he concluded.
