About business events
Facts and figures
Business Events Strategy
More information
About business events
Business events are a high yielding sector of the tourism industry and include association meetings, incentive travel, corporate meetings, conventions and exhibitions.
The tourism industry stands to benefit from sustained growth in business events. The Australian Government, through Tourism Australia's Business Events Australia and the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism (RET) seeks to capitalise on Australia's advantages and build sustainability in the business events sector over the longer term.
Facts and figures of business event travel
Combined results from the Tourism Research Australia International Visitors Survey and National Visitors Survey show that the business event sector is an important industry for Australian tourism, worth $8.5 billion in 2010. In that year, domestic overnight business event visitors spent $5.7 billion while international business event visitors contributed $2.0 billion. Around $0.8 billion of expenditure was made by Australian residents for day travel to attend a business event.
Business events are also important to tourism as they are high yielding. For example, overnight business events travellers spend on average $212 per night, significantly higher that the average spending by all overnight Australian resident visitors of $136.
All sub-sectors in terms of visitors returned to growth in 2010, following the sharp negative shock of the global financial crisis in 2009. The strongest percentage growth was for domestic day business event visitors (up 11 per cent). The number of international business event visitors also increased strongly by eight per cent. The number of domestic overnight business event visitors increased by four per cent.
Business events cover a number of categories, including 'conference/convention/seminar' (grouped), 'trade fair/exhibitions', and business meetings and incentive travel.
Around 70 per cent of all business event expenditure in Australia (or $5.9 billion) was made by people attending a business meeting.
Business Events Strategy
In order to build sustainability in the business events sector, a Business Events Strategy was established.
In late October 2008 the strategy was welcomed by the Minister for Tourism, the Hon Martin Ferguson AM MP. The strategy contained 52 recommendations and included a consideration of supply-side issues.
Minister Ferguson considered the Business Events Strategy and its recommendations and provided a response to industry.
The Business Events Strategy Implementation Group (BESIG) comprising representatives from industry and government was established to implement the Business Events Strategy, and provided its final report in December 2010.
More information
For more information about business events and tourism in Australia contact the Tourism Division on (02) 6243 7113.