In an exclusive interview with micenet at the Asia Pacific Incentives and Meetings Event (AIME) earlier this month, Business Events Perth CEO Gareth Martin said the bureau had locked in 350 national and international events out to 2030, supporting around 290,000 hotel room nights.
Martin also said Business Events Perth had brought WA’s largest ever contingent to AIME, with 28 partners and 40 people on their stand right at the entrance to the event’s show floor.
During AIME, Business Events Perth was one of four bureaux to team up on a Tuesday evening event, with the others being Northern Territory Business Events, Canberra Convention Bureau and Business Events Tasmania.
Martin explained why his team worked with the trio of others to stage a combined invitation-only evening during AIME, which drew an attendance of 200.
“We worked with Canberra, Tasmania and Northern Territory, as we do, to run a collaborative show and a good networking evening for clients that have had only 15-minute appointments during the day but then can spend a little bit more time in a networking environment and speaking,” he said.
“In Australia, we’re team Australia, aren’t we, at the end of the day,” he said of the somewhat unusual banding together of competing bureaus.
“It extends the opportunity [of] the 15-minute appointment schedules…at AIME.
“You can then get into a deeper conversation with a client and we’ve certainly had feedback from our members that they’ve been able to close business having the longer meetings afterwards,” said Martin.
Unlike most other capital city bureaux, Business Events Perth does not represent only the city, but supports all of the regions of Western Australia, from the Kimberley in the north-west to Margaret River and the southern visitor economies below Perth.
“Coming up this year is the opening of Saltwater Busselton, which is a new convention centre precinct in the Busselton region, about two and a half hours south of Perth…that’ll be a marvellous facility once it’s open,” he said.
And while the mining industry might be a significant economic powerhouse for WA, Martin notes that the state is becoming known for its medical meetings.
“It’s about 55 per cent medical conferences that come to Western Australia. Our mix is about 80 per cent national/international conferencing and 20 per cent corporate…and then the Western Australian Government’s got a focus around Diversify WA, which is trying to attract growth in different sectors other than mining.”
Martin also mentions subvention funding.
“We’re backed by significant government funding that enables us to do activities like bringing our counterparts to AIME as well as strongly representing what Western Australia is and the opportunity for business events there,” he said.
