The recent return of visitors to Australia from Singapore has given the business events community a huge boost, prompting new business leads and ending the drought of inbound travellers since the pandemic began.
Sydney and Melbourne opened their borders to fully vaccinated Singaporeans on November 21, greeting arrivals at the airport with live music, ‘welcome back’ messages and gifts.
The reopening has been seen as a critical move to restart international meetings in Australia, which is estimated to have lost A$35 billion (US$25 billion) in event cancellations last year and more than 92,000 jobs.
“It’s an incredibly positive and crucial step towards the recovery of Australia’s business events industry,” said Tourism Australia’s executive general manager of commercial & business events Australia, Robin Mack.
“For business events planners in Singapore, the reopening of our border provides the opportunity and confidence to book Australia for their next business event, while also signalling to our other key international markets that Australia is getting ready to reopen to the world.”
“Since the announcement of travel reopening with Singapore, we have received business leads from the region, highlighting that Australia is still seen as highly desirable with exceptional destinations, world-class venues and unique experiences. According to in-market intelligence, we expect enquiries to increase as planners’ confidence continues to rise,” he continued.
Mack said the border reopening begins a shift in focus, from keeping Australia top-of-mind with customers, to converting incoming leads and capitalising on short- to mid-term business. Tourism Australia will run a targeted PR and marketing drive highlighting Australia’s readiness to welcome back business events, as well as fam programmes “when the time is right”.
“Encouragingly, we are seeing business leads from Singapore for late 2022 and beyond from sectors including insurance and direct selling industries and a trend towards smaller corporate meetings and incentives,” said Mack.
“Our recent international research also supports this, with 80 per cent of incentive decision-makers from Singapore indicating they are likely to visit Australia in the next two years – rising to 88 per cent in the next three years,” he continued.
Australia’s border opening to Singapore has also been welcomed by event planners, who can now forecast meetings with more certainty.
“(It’s) an exciting step for Australian business events,” said Nicole Walker, managing director of Arinex. “We are assessing ways we can maximise any opportunities with Singapore and I will be meeting with clients and representatives from (there), as well as across the Asian region at IBTM World this week.”
“We are also actively approaching new inbound groups through our representation partner Body and Soul, who are tapped into the Singaporean market and will identify prospects on our behalf,” she continued.
Australia welcomed 74,000 business events visitors from Singapore in the year ending December 2019, who spent a total of A$270 million. Australia will also welcome fully vaccinated citizens from Japan and South Korea from December 1.
Destination Gold Coast’s Board of Directors has appointed Adrienne Readings as chair of the tourism body, following the step-down announcement of Paul Donovan, who held the position for 17 years.
Readings will be working closely with the Board and the team at Destination Gold Coast to represent the interests of Gold Coast’s 4,400 tourism businesses and the 35,000 people employed by the sector. She has served on the Board of Destination Gold Coast for 17 years and formerly acted as vice chair.
In total, she possesses more than 30 years’ experience in business events, tourism management and hospitality.
Readings is also the general manager of Australia’s largest regional convention centre, the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre (GCCEC), the first woman to be appointed general manager of an Australian convention centre.
In her role at GCCEC, Readings successfully identified and developed commercial opportunities for the Gold Coast and oversaw the delivery of billions of dollars of economic impact to the region.
Readings said in a press statement: “The next two years is all about our city’s recovery and creating a blueprint for future success to attract more visitors, more often and to grow expenditure for the Gold Coast.
“It has been a heartbreaking 18 months for our industry, but I see so much opportunity ahead of us with the return of interstate visitors in a matter of weeks and eventually international markets, a future pipeline of A$179 million (US$129 million) in business events opportunity for the city as well as working with peers to strengthen the future of the region through new infrastructure, development and city connectivity.”