Western Australia’s business events marketing body believes its $93 million injection into the state economy this year could be even larger if the state had better infrastructure to support big conferences.
Western Australia’s business events marketing body believes its $93 million injection into the state economy this year could be even larger if the state had better infrastructure to support big conferences.
Reporting on the Perth Convention Bureau’s sales results for the 2009-10 financial year, Tourism Minister Liz Constable said the PCB’s $93 million return for the state exceeded its annual target by more than 14 per cent.
Estimated delegate spend jumped 40 per cent on the previous years’ sales result of $66 million.
PCB managing director Christine McLean said that the return could be 30 per cent greater than the $93 million reported due to outdated statistics from 2004 being used to calculate the daily expenditure of international and national delegates.
Ms McLean said that the current level of return was achieved from an annual budget of $4.5 million, of which $3 million comes from the state government.
And she emphasised that the reported figure only included the business that PCB secured, usually through a formal bidding process, and not the conferences that elected to come to WA off their own back.
“The real value of conferences coming to WA is much higher, it’s more than double what the PCB does,” she said.
Meaning business events are potentially worth upwards of $200 million each year to WA, but even with this value, Ms McLean suggested the future is “not so bright”.
She said as the global events industry grows each year, WA’s (and Australia’s) market share falls as competing nations worldwide continue to enhance their level of investment in infrastructure related to events.
“Asia is the fastest growing sector, so it’s a great opportunity for us as we’re the Australian gateway.”
“But think about our challenges: Singapore, Korea and the Middle East are all destinations investing billions of dollars building convention centres, hotels, attractions.
“And what have we done the last 10 years?
“We haven’t had a new hotel since 2004 I think, we’ve got no new infrastructure in terms of attractions and if we can’t compete then the business will not come here.
“We’re the only state in Australia that hasn’t or isn’t in the process of increasing its convention centre [footprint] and given that we are supposedly the richest state in the country you have to wonder why.”
Ms McLean highlighted that competing governments worldwide appreciated the significance of visiting delegates from business events who spend up to six times more than equivalent leisure travellers.
“We need to make sure everyone, the government and the industry, are aware of the opportunities,” she said.
