The association has called on the government to provide $9 million per year to the Business Events Bid Fund Program, managed by Tourism Australia.
It is not clear how much the bid fund receives currently. In terms of public announcements, the bid fund had a $12 million allocation when it launched in 2018, received another $3 million in 2021 followed by a further $5 million in early 2022, before garnering bipartisan support in the lead-up to the 2022 federal election.
Alongside a boost in funding, ABEA also wants the Commonwealth Government to extend the bidding horizon for the subvention fund, which is currently accepting applications for funding for conferences and incentives held before the end of 2029.
micenet has started to see bid wins being reported for events in 2030, indicating a need to extend the bid fund’s dates.
“With certainty of funding beyond 2029, Australia could grasp the opportunity to win the next generation of high-impact international conferences and exhibitions,” said ABEA CEO, Melissa Brown.
“Business events drive far more than tourism, they underpin innovation, trade, research collaboration and talent attraction across priority sectors.”
ABEA notes the significant return on investment from the bid fund, which currently returns $52 for every dollar invested, but also highlighted the decline in international business events visitors and spend in Australia for the year to September 2025, compared to the year prior, alongside the increase in subvention in other countries.
Of note, New Zealand received an extra NZ$6 million in 2025 to support business events, although not all of this went towards subvention. Canada’s CA$60 million subvention fund was also flagged by ABEA.
The second federal ask from the association was for a National Business Events Data Hub and Dashboard.
ABEA acknowledged the work done by Tourism Research Australia (TRA) on the visitation and spend generated by business events but says what is being measured does not capture the full value of the industry.
The TRA figures also appear to have stalled, with the business events figures on the TRA site only covering up to the end of 2024, while overall tourism figures have been released to the end of September 2025.
ABEA cites the 2019 report released by the now defunct Business Events Council of Australia (BECA), which put the business events industry’s direct expenditure at $35.7 billion in the 2019 financial year, as the ‘most comprehensive’ study of the industry to date, but pointed out that it is now outdated given the ‘significant transformation’ of the industry since then.
ABEA also flagged the significant difference between the business events value posited by TRA’s data and the BECA report, with the TRA data suggesting a $19.6 billion value, against the aforementioned $35.7 billion from BECA.
“Policy, investment and infrastructure decisions increasingly demand timely, granular and credible data,” said Brown.
“Without it, the business events industry risks under-representing its economic, innovation and trade contribution to Australia.
“ABEA proposes a staged project to integrate and enhance existing datasets, establish a nationally consistent data framework across venues, bureaux, organisers and suppliers, and deliver a secure digital platform providing decision-ready insights to government and industry.”
The association has asked for $250,000 from the federal government to produce a concept paper and a roadmap to implementation of the hub and dashboard this year.
ABEA suggests TRA could oversee the project to make sure it’s in step with other data being collected and believes the initiative would provide a timely and sustainable platform to collect and showcase business events data.
“A modern data foundation will allow government to see the full value of business events, not just as tourism, but as a driver of productivity, trade and national capability, as well as providing real time data to inform business decisions by operators.”
