Lisa Hopkins, chief executive of Business Events Industry Aotearoa, has her eagle eyes on the future, which she says is burning bright for New Zealand’s business events sector now that the country has the right infrastructure for global gathering and destination impressions are changing
You took leadership of BEIA (CINZ back then) during a very unusual period, and it saw you and your team focused on connecting with partners to support each other and to plan for recovery. Now that the pandemic is seen as being over and business activities are back, do you see your leadership and BEIA’s areas of focus shifting?
I think we’ve gone from crisis management to future focus – from problem-solving to looking forward to how we can contribute to New Zealand’s growth.
It is very clear to me that we do that by talking about the incredible infrastructure that New Zealand now has and will have in the near future. We need to make sure that events like MEETINGS are well-subscribed to, so that we can maintain all our great existing relationships as well as make new connections.
We also need to talk about the real value that our industry brings to New Zealand and its people. This is very important. If you look across all of the people and organisations related to tourism and hospitality here, we are all saying the same thing: How do we as a collective contribute to making New Zealand the greatest country on the planet?
It is a lofty ambition, but you need to aspire, don’t you? And I believe this is achievable. We have some pretty awesome things here, including some rather cool convention centres. (Editor’s note: Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre opened in December 2021; Tākina Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre opened in May 2023; New Zealand International Convention Centre in Auckland is expected to open in 2025)
We have recently seen some very happy announcements of New Zealand scoring major business events. What is the mood on the ground among New Zealand’s business events community?
It is buoyant. The industry is really starting to see that the world now recognises New Zealand as an important and viable destination for meetings.
We talk about business events as a catalyst for good, and our convention centres are a catalyst for business events to deliver on that. By bringing these events to New Zealand, we get an opportunity to drive home that message of being able to provide better for communities and societies.
How did meeting planners view New Zealand before?
Before Covid, New Zealand was seen as a small country that took a long time to get to, and our event offerings were restricted. People had a lot of choice. And I am speaking as someone who used to sit in Singapore and had conversations with clients looking at New Zealand. (Editor’s note: Hopkins held leadership roles in BCD Meetings & Events Asia Pacific for more than eight years, and this was preceded by her time at Grass Roots Asia Pacific also in Singapore)
Now, sitting in this role and seeing things from a different perspective, I understand that the infrastructure that New Zealand has and its ability to open a convention centre in 2021 are all nothing sort of miraculous.
People around the world have told me how much they admired the way New Zealand handled the pandemic, and also admitted that New Zealand was not as far as they thought it was. The latter to me was a really good thing!
I was talking to our Singaporean guests at MEETINGS that Singaporeans often travel seven hours to Japan (among the top outbound destinations of Singaporean holidaymakers). New Zealand is just two more hours away! It really isn’t that far, plus we’ve got a fabulous airline (Air New Zealand). You get the Kiwi treatment the moment to step onboard. You get greeted with “kia ora”, and the service is very warm, laidback and just really friendly all around.
From TTG Asia Media’s perspective, we saw that Tourism New Zealand kept its communication lines very open and active with our meeting planner audience throughout Covid. Do you think that has helped to stir stronger interest in New Zealand now?
The pandemic was one day going to finish, and we knew that. Therefore, while it was difficult for New Zealanders to understand why New Zealand was still promoting itself during the pandemic, we knew people were going to be faced with a lot of choices once travel was possible again. We needed to make sure New Zealand maintained a top-of-mind presence once normality returned.
Manpower is a challenge in some major MICE cities as they pick up the pieces after Covid-19. Is this an issue in New Zealand?
It certainly has been. As an industry, we are doing quite a bit of education to promote business events as a career that offers things that people are interested in – it is sustainable in that it believes in helping people and the environment, and it pays well.
So, we are trying to encourage more people to come into our sector.
Business events, though, need a degree of experience – life experience or industry experience, or both. We need to find people who understand how things work and have fantastic, creative ideas for events that will blow attendees away.
All the big business events organisations here offer internship programmes. At BEIA we run a mentorship programme every year. It is a structured programme that is designed to give participants the benefit of mentors’ wisdom and experience. There is no age limit, and the programme is open to anyone that is just starting out in the industry.
Let’s talk about MEETINGS 2023 – this edition is the event’s largest ever, with more than 400 buyers from around the world. Is the event involving more buyers from outside of New Zealand and Australia this time round, compared with past editions?
About 70 per cent of business events in New Zealand are domestic in their origin – these are very rough estimates – but the big events are international. That’s why it is so important for us to get that balance right between domestic and international buyers.
We would love to see more international buyers in the future.
Besides MEETINGS 2023, what other activities have BEIA lined up for the rest of the year to help your community expedite the return of international events?
We are going to launch Business Events Week this September. We are doing this in conjunction with our good friends at Tourism New Zealand.
Business Events Week will kick off with the BEIA Annual Conference in Marlborough, before moving on to Wellington for a policy forum, and Auckland for the Tourism New Zealand Business Events National Awards, and workshop events. We are collaborating with Tourism New Zealand on different sessions and workshops. Our objective is to engage with officials, business leaders and academics to talk through the value of the sector, what good it can leave behind, and how more people can be involved in our work – beyond its monetary contributions.
Pre-Covid, our sector was seen as just bringing lots of people travelling around on big buses that belch smoke, and oh great, another conference is in town. Now, we are ready to show that we are very sustainable and very focused on the skills and knowledge that conferences can transfer to the local community.
