Events Choosing Sydney Despite Convention Centre Closure

Sydney, Australia is hitting the publicity trail with positive stories on the city despite not having a convention centre.

“Sydney expects 2014 to be a strong year for business events with close to 53,000 delegates spending more than 230,000 days in the city and delivering an economic impact (EI) of close to A$200 million to the New South Wales (NSW) economy.”

Lyn Lewis-Smith, ceo BESydney said: “New South Wales welcomes around 50 per cent of the 890,000 international business visitors to Australia each year. And of these total arrivals, conference and convention arrivals account for about 20 per cent of visitors."

“This year, Sydney is open for business even though we won’t have a convention centre for the next three years. The pipeline of secured events is strong and we are still seeing bid wins for short term Asian business that will continue to grow the event pool. The benefits from all of these meetings, incentives and conferences will be great.

“You only have to look at the events of all sizes that we are hosting this year - from 18,000 people to just a few hundred - to see that our venues are continuing to accommodate conferences, meetings and incentives in Sydney’s usual, exceptional manner.

"--Some 2014 highlight events secured by BESydney include: The 105th Rotary International Convention for 18,000 delegates with an EI of almost A$64 million; Pro-Health China Annual Conference for 4,500 delegates with an EI of A$22 million; International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) World Parks Congress for 3,000 delegates with an EI of A$24 million and the LG Group Long Service Staff Reward for 1,400 delegates with an EI of A$7 million.

“Rotary is one of the world’s largest annual international business events and will inject close to A$64 million into the local economy during the four official convention days in June, making it one of the largest business events ever mounted in Australia,” said Lewis-Smith.