AUSTRALASIA - National tourism body Tourism Australia has launched a new integrated marketing campaign aimed at corporate meeting and event planners.

The campaign, launched at the Asia-Pacific Incentives and Meetings Expo (AIME) 2012 (21-22 February) in Melbourne, will form part of a broader strategy to grow Australia’s high yielding business events sector to as much as AU$16bn by 2020.

The digital campaign, including a new website businessevents.australia.com, follows in the footsteps of Tourism Australia’s consumer marketing campaign, There’s nothing like Australia.

For the first time Tourism Australia will consistently use the campaign positioning for all business events marketing activity.

Tourism Australia MD Andrew McEvoy said business events and business visitation made a significant contribution to Australia’s tourism economy but that there was scope for significant growth long term under Australian tourism’s Tourism 2020 strategy.

“The economic impact of business events in Australia continues to rise with the latest figures from Tourism Research Australia stating delegates for business events contributed around $8.4bn in 2010, up from $7.9bn in 2009,” McEvoy said.

“On average business events visitors spend 55 per cent more per day than the average visitor at $212 per delegate per night; so the returns on our investment are strong but what’s more they are also more likely to return for a business and leisure visit to Australia in the future.

“In the year to September 2011, international business visitation rose seven per cent to 898,000, with strong growth from Asia, a critical region as Australia increasingly positions itself for the Asian Century.”

The campaign will be rolled out in the USA, UK, China, New Zealand, Korea, Singapore and Indonesia.

McEvoy said economic factors in some of Australia’s key markets were continuing to impact on travel to Australia and that the business events sector would be well aided by its new targeted marketing approach. “It is why the new campaign is so critical in telling the world how Australia can deliver on their business objectives – whether it is incentivising their teams or improving their business performance, and do this with team building activities, experience of our modern cities, unquestioned natural appeal, and great people,” he said. 

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