Tourism Australia’s executive general manager of industry, Sally Cope, has added business events to her remit, after Mack, who was the EGM for Business Events Australia, was promoted to the top job last month.
Mack made the announcement on Monday morning at the opening press conference for the Asia Pacific Incentives and Meetings Event (AIME).
“Sally has a deep sector knowledge of business events and tourism, and I know will just take us to the next level along with Kelly [Maynard, Tourism Australia’s general manager of business events] and her team.”
Cope was previously Tourism Australia’s regional general manager for the UK and Northern Europe, for nearly six years. She became the agency’s EGM of industry in mid-2025.
Mack used this morning’s press conference to make a couple of other announcements relating to Tourism Australia’s business events work.
He revealed that Tourism Australia’s incentive showcase, Australia Next, held in Melbourne in December, yielded 147 leads for Australian industry worth $167 million in potential business. Those leads came from just shy of 100 international incentive decision-makers and decision-influencers.
He also announced that the value of events supported by Australia’s national subvention fund, the Business Events Bid Fund, managed by Tourism Australia, had shot up over the last year from $1 billion around this time in 2025, to $1.38 billion now.
This increase is a result of both a rise in economic impact of events that have already been delivered that received Bid Fund support and new events secured for Australia over the last year, that have Bid Fund dollars attached to them.
micenet understands that 29 events have been won with Bid Fund help since July 1, 2025.
