NEW ZEALAND – The New Zealand meetings industry believes the need for an international convention centre is stronger than ever, with one 6,000-delegate event in the balance as the Government prevaricates over going forward with the concept. Such a centre has been under discussion in New Zealand for 25 years now.
“An association's World Conference for 2020, worth an estimated NZ$55m in economic value is lined up, but the official NZ bid to hold the conference must be submitted by March 2012 if the country is to be in the running," says Conventions and Incentives New Zealand (CINZ) CEO, Alan Trotter. "This is just one example of a big ticket item that we will be missing out on by not having a large international standard convention centre.
"We are lagging way behind international markets with our large-scale infrastructure, even Australia has a large convention centre in each of its states, with some states even boasting two," he adds. Currently the largest convention New Zealand can host is up to 2,500 delegates in both Christchurch and Auckland.
The New Zealand Government is at the stage of calling for expressions of interest to build a convention centre.
The 6,000 delegate conference bid on the cards is one of a series of bids CINZ looks after through the Government-funded Conference Assistance Programme (CAP) scheme. Through CAP CINZ helps New Zealand’s non-profit organisations to consider, evaluate, prepare and present bids to bring international conferences to the country.
During the past 12 months CINZ has processed 27 new bids with a combined economic value assessed at more than NZ$133m. At a success rate for first bids at 70 per cent, this represents a return on Government funds of around NZ$180 for every NZ$1 invested.
There are currently more than NZ$130m of bids in the planning process, or still to be presented.
