City cashes in on events market

Rotorua's conventions market continues to increase the number, size and duration of events hosted in the city and Taupo's sector is holding its own.

Ministry of Economic Development figures for the year to June show Rotorua hosted 12.5 per cent more conference and expo events than the previous year, welcoming 34.7 per cent more delegates across 22.6 per cent more delegate days.

More than half these delegate days involved business events, with associations contributing another 30 per cent (see Graph 1). One-day events were the most common, with 1584 conventions making up 77.7 per cent of the 2039 events.

The city's venues captured 6 per cent of the national market across all sectors, holding steady on the previous year. Rotorua has the fifth highest number of events of the 10 main conventions centres, behind Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury and the Hawke's Bay, but shifts up to second highest in the 501+ delegate sector. The city hosted 15 of the 61 events of this size, second only to Auckland on 27.

Events & Venues sales and marketing manager Brett Jeffery said the statistics were great news because they showed the hard work by his team, Destination Rotorua Marketing and individual venues within the city was paying off. "It is all down to strategic marketing and hard work."

He said Rotorua's second ranking in the 501+ category showed the Energy Events Centre was truly coming of age. "It is now out of its honeymoon period and being recognised as a serious venue."

Much of his focus is on the international market and events to run in 2013 and Jeffery said the potential for larger conferences from Australia was limited until transtasman flights to Rotorua became more frequent. "They want to fly in and fly out. With Rotorua they have two flights a week to choose from. With other centres, they could have two or more a day."

But he said it was a growth market and work was being done to put the location on the radar for when services did increase. Interest is also strong out of China and he sees that market really taking off in the next 12 to 18 months, with the Indian market promising to be "massive" in the future.

Destination Rotorua Marketing acting general manager Tania Bui said the Rotorua Convention Bureau was working to build Rotorua's reputation as a conference location within the domestic market and internationally - including a function for convention organisers at No1 Queen Street cafe on November 10. "With the massive conferences, there are only a certain number of venues in New Zealand that can hold that many delegates, so places such as the Energy Events Centre are fantastic for Rotorua."

She said Rotorua also had the infrastructure to accommodate and cater for such large numbers. "The volume of accommodation is great, but it is also about the variety of accommodation sector."