Source: Tourism New Zealand
The survey of more than 230 New Zealand-based organisations found that overall, 94% are planning to hold a business event in the next 18 months. Of these, 29% plan to hold events before December 2020, with the rest planning events for 2021.
“These results are promising and show that the business events sector will have an important role to play in the recovery of the tourism sector and New Zealand’s economy,” says Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive Stephen England-Hall.
The survey also showed that 79% of those surveyed consider face-to-face conferences and offsite meetings important for their organisation; while 39% said they appreciated face-to-face conferences and offsite meetings more now than pre-Covid-19.
However, events in the next 18 months will be smaller and less frequent compared to the pre-Covid-19 activity: businesses expect event budgets to be reduced, while associations predict less interest from their members and to feel the effects of closed borders on international attendance.
Tourism New Zealand has used the data to prepare guidance for industry about booking business events. To learn more, and how to best to attract business events in a post-Covid-19 environment, join our webinar with the Tourism New Zealand Business Events team on Tuesday 16 June at 10am.
Register for the webinar here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_c2EI_fPLQwK6vRRxGUYq2Q
Notes:
- Tourism New Zealand works alongside the New Zealand industry to bid for business events to be held in New Zealand. Business events deliver a range of benefits to New Zealand and our communities including knowledge and culture exchange, growing New Zealand’s expertise and economic growth.
- The results drew on 232 decisions-makers from NZ-based organisations who had a business event (conference, meetings, incentive trips) domestically or internationally in the last three years, including participants from the CINZ and AuSAE databases. (Sample: 88 Associations/ 56 NFP/ 71 Corporates/17 Other) The survey was conducted between 10 and 19 May by Kantar.
