The city has found various ways to beef up its offerings and are employing soft strategies to stay competitive, but there is still room to improve
Adelaide may be the longest established destination for association meetings in Australia, but she’s certainly not showing any signs of greying. Rather, the city has a new vibrancy that has both stakeholders and delegates waxing lyrical about the transformation underway.
“Delegates are raving about the city,” enthused founder of Adelaide-based associations PCO The Meeting People, Lara Malcolm. “They are loving the little bars, laneways and vibrant life that’s on offer in the city especially at night. That’s a massive change for me as I don’t think I would have heard that five years ago.”
Adelaide was the first Australian city to construct a purpose-built convention centre in 1987, although the Adelaide Convention Bureau has been active at bidding for conferences for 43 years.
In recent times, they’ve upped the game with a A$5 billion (US$3.8 billion) makeover along the city’s riverbank, revealing an upgraded Festival Centre, an expanded convention centre, and the largest bio-medical institute in the Southern Hemisphere. Not to mention creating those laneways Malcolm mentioned and encouraging the set up of smaller eateries and bars to bring life to the after-hours in the city.
It’s a smart move not just for tourism. All this makes Adelaide more attractive to association meeting delegates and planners, who make up the bread and butter – 80 per cent – of the Adelaide Convention Bureau’s (ACB) business.
“It’s set up perfectly for the delegate,” Damien Kitto, ACB’s CEO, pointed out. “There are almost 2,000 hotel rooms directly across the road from the Adelaide Convention Centre, which adjoins the new BioMedical precinct, and is a close walk to the laneways and bars in the city.”
The numbers do speak for themselves. Kitto shared that the past four years have been particularly successful, with a 53 per cent increase on the economic value of association conventions secured by the bureau, representing A$725 million in business activity for the industry.
But while much of the attention has gone to the physical remake of Adelaide, perhaps the real secret sauce to the city’s popularity with associations lies in the soft strategies employed by the Adelaide Convention Centre.
Its director for convention and exhibition sales, Simon Burgess, reveals that its service has adapted over the years from being purely a convention space for rent, to working with associations as a partner in their marketing.
“Associations have sometimes been in a situation where they have to review what their relevance is, especially in an information age where information – that used to be provided at these meetings – is now readily available. It becomes a challenge to maintain membership numbers or attract the younger end of the audience,” said Burgess.
“What they want us to do is help them access our public relations channels so they can interact with the community. And they’re interested in creating a legacy, to have some sort of meaningful end result to a conference,” he added.
However, Kitto was quick to correct any suggestions that the path to success is guaranteed.
“It’s a great success story, but there are more destinations now that are very hungry to host global association events with some very large convention centres being constructed, particularly across Asia and the Middle East,” he shared.
“(Meanwhile), the conventions pie hasn’t grown. That’s why it has become more challenging despite Australia’s great product, and is one of the reasons why we’re slipping down the ICCA rankings. And that’s why we all have to work harder than ever”.
Currently, Australia ranks 16 on ICCA’s list, having dropped in recent times after enjoying top 10 status for a prolonged period.
Still, there are silver linings. While Adelaide’s strategy has been focused on attracting small- to medium-sized associations more suited to the size of the city, Malcolm said she feels more confident the bigger ones will now be coming to Adelaide because of the city’s transformation. Recently, the city hosted its largest ever business event, the 68th International Astronautical Congress with 4,470 delegates.
Nevertheless, Malcolm believes there are areas the ACB can do better.
“I think suppliers that are a bit out of the box and don’t have big marketing budgets to help themselves could be linked and showcased a little better. We have an abundance of amazing produce that could serve as conference gifts for example. We just need to go that step further,” she concluded.
