Australian Meetings and Expos Face Tough Future

By Gary Tufel -- Tradeshow Week, 6/19/2006

Melbourne, Australia—The Australian meetings and exhibition industry is in good shape, but further growth probably isn't in the cards. That's the breakdown given by Australian industry experts attending AIME 2006, the 14th AsiaPacific Incentives & Meetings Expo, held June 6–7 at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre.

Most of these experts admitted to some concern about the future of their business. One contributing factor is the rise of large show management firms that operate throughout the world, often rendering homegrown Australian organizers irrelevant. But perhaps the biggest challenge to the Australian industry is the increasing sophistication of regional competitors in countries like China and India.

The Australian events business is at best holding its own and not gaining any international market share, said Geoff Donaghy, director of the management board of Ogden IFC. Donaghy oversees the Cairns Convention Centre and Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane. He is also overseeing the Darwin Convention Centre, now under construction.

Donaghy said that, with new facilities opening and a relatively small population of about 20 million, Australia's domestic industry is spread thinner and thinner, just as overseas factors beyond the country's control become more complicated.

Prime example: The 2008 Summer Olympics will give China, already a major player, a huge boost. Growth in Macau and India will also have a large effect on Australia, Donaghy said.

In addition, Eastern Europe and the Middle East are opening up to meetings and exhibitions with regional and global alliances becoming more common, said Andrew Lee, executive director of World Events Organisation, an Asian event management company. Lee also noted the aggressive nature of marketing the meetings business in Malaysia and Thailand. Nevertheless, he said, they are now competing more with each other than with Australia.

Robin Lokerman, CEO of MCI, a Brussels association and event management company allied with SmithBucklin, saw a glimmer of hope for the Australian industry in the large number of Indian and Chinese students currently studying science and attending medical schools. He believes this will translate into more medical and scientific events in the future.

"Australia can benefit from this, and already is," said Lokerman, who has opened an office in Singapore. "But you have to watch Singapore, Macau and others in the region. And Australia has to continue to invest in marketing and work as a team."

He said Macau, in particular, will be a force to be reckoned with.

Although Australia attracts few truly international events, it does draw international participants, said Roslyn McLeod, founder and managing director of meeting management firm Tour Hosts Australia. Still, she is concerned about the country's "immense and growing" regional competition, and its ability to respond. The Taiwanese government, for example, will spend $10 million this year to train meetings business personnel, a gesture the Australian industry could never hope for from its government.

"We don't get any government support," McLeod said.

Another challenge for the Australian industry, according to McLeod, is international organizers supplanting local ones. She said many Australian organizers are moving into the destination management business in order to make ends meet. Lokerman agreed, predicting that the future of the traditional professional convention organizer (PCO) in Australia would be dim.

There is a great opportunity for "a big PCO like us to become a PCO for Australia, but we're not big brother," Lokerman said. "A PCO can either be internationally focused or locally focused."

Another factor causing some alarm is the tendency of American organizers — who once might have chosen Australia for a foreign meeting location simply because attendees preferred an English-speaking environment — to be wooed by other countries.

Donaghy noted that the American Society of Assn. Executives, for example, recently took 50 top association executives to China to scout potential meeting sites.

Exhibitors on the AIME showfloor agreed with many of the conclusions of their industry leaders. Lyn Lewis-Smith, sales director for the Sydney Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Australian facility expansion and construction would help make the country more competitive. Her bureau has even begun opening offices in China and elsewhere in Asia. Still, she expects growth in the industry to remain flat.

Amanda Anker, marketing director for the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre, added that the growth her facility is seeing is coming from existing exhibitions and conferences that want more space — not from international events that she and her staff are able to lure to Australia.

Nevertheless, the center's sales director for the Asian market, Kristian Nicholls, said Sydney does get its share of meetings that cycle through the region. He said associations incorporate the destination on a rotation that includes cities in Taiwan, Thailand and China.

"One thing's for sure," Nicholls said, "we're all in the international marketplace."