How New Zealand can win ‘brutal battle’ for share of $2.7 trillion worth of business events

New Zealand has one big advantage when it comes to attracting major conferences in the $2.7 trillion business events sector – but it won’t last long.

An international expert says this country is in a sweet spot with major convention centre openings over a three-year period in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland.

“This is the last developed country on earth to have a network of modern convention centres - every other country has already done this,” says Martin Sirk.

“It’s great that the country is on stream and you’ve now got this network, but that’s table stake that gets you to base camp of Everest.”

With the planned opening of the New Zealand International Convention Centre in Auckland in 2025, and two new convention centres – Te Pae Christchurch and Tākina Wellington – already open, the events industry says business is being booked well into the future.

Sirk is the founder of international strategic consultancy Sirk Serendipity and spends his time between the US and Europe. He says making that capital investment gets this country to first base in the “brutal” contest for events.

“For the next four or five years you’ll be able to get the PR benefits of being the new boys on the block. But that fades very rapidly and there are new centres popping up all over the world,” he says.

“We’re continuing to see investment going in the [United] States and especially in Asia-Pacific, and once you build these things, you have to fill up. The level of competition is brutal out there.”

He’s speaking as an insider. From 2002 to 2018, Silk was chief executive of the International Congress and Convention Association, and before that held senior positions with Hilton International, Brighton and Hove City Council, and the British Tourist Authority, working and organising meetings in all regions of the world.

He has been in New Zealand at Business Events Week 2023, run by Business Events Industry Aotearoa.

The prize is vast. An international group, the Events Industry Council, and Oxford Economics value the business events industry’s economic impact at US$1.6 trillion ($2.7 trillion).

The research measures direct spending, total business sales, jobs created, and the contribution to global GDP. It also emphasises the wider benefits of business events, such as knowledge sharing, innovation and employee engagement.

The economic value of business events in New Zealand was estimated at $1.48 billion in the year ending June 2019, the most recent year for which there is full data before the country’s border closed.

The business events sector is currently Tourism New Zealand’s fourth most valuable visitor market - after Australia, the United States and Britain.

TRENZ tourism event delegates at Te Pae Convention Centre in Christchurch. Photo / George Heard

The country’s leading annual business events exhibition, known as MEETINGS, broke records this year for the value of business generated. A buyer survey shows $157 million worth of business will take place during the next five years following the two-day event in Wellington in June.

Tourism NZ aims to bid for a record 90 international conferences worth $135m in the 2024 financial year. This follows 84 bids worth $120m in 2023.

Business events were obliterated when the pandemic hit in 2020. Sirk says that in Europe, as an example, such events have recovered to around 80 per cent of pre-Covid times. However, online meetings are still having an impact on physical gatherings.

“The pandemic had a huge impact on physical face-to-face meetings,” he says. “The industry ground to a halt.”

Every chief executive and organisation re-engineered the way in which they ran their meetings. And some of this will be permanent.

“Many of the routine, functional things that can now be done over Zoom will continue to be done over Zoom. But we’ve seen a huge rebound in terms of demand for meetings to deal with those more complex relationship-type objectives.” Some problems can’t be solved online.

In the post-pandemic world, there are going to be winners and losers, he says.

“I guess like me, many people are weighing up where we should be and only going to the places where it’s really critical that we do go,” says Sirk.

“It means that when you do run a meeting, you’ve got to make sure it’s a bloody good meeting. If you’re running the second- or third-best meeting in your field, you’re in danger of extinction.”

That means having top talent among presenters and panellists, world-class content and making sure the event is run as sustainably as possible.

Martin Sirk founder of strategic consultancy Sirk Serendipity. Photo / Supplied

This is especially true for geographically remote New Zealand.

“It’s always been a challenge to get people down here, even before people have been putting sustainability right at the top of the agenda.”

It is now expected that organisers will offer plant-based food, low-impact venues with no single-use plastics and a recycling policy. Event organisers also need to think about the broader societal benefits of running a meeting, what can visitors bring to this country and ideas they can leave here to improve it.

Sirk says organisers also need to get creative with their subjects to make their event as enticing as possible. Using the diaspora of Kiwis experts in their fields – who can tell a great story to international colleagues – is also key to attracting business here.

International interest in Māori culture and the tangata whenua approach to economics and sustainability is also a drawcard but can’t be used as a superficial way of selling the country.

“New Zealand is uniquely positioned to be able to put its cultural appeal inside the box as well as on the wrapping paper,” says Sirk.

Grant Bradley has been working at the Herald since 1993. He is the Business Herald’s deputy editor and covers aviation and tourism.