Business Events Australia focuses on differentiation and customer expectations.

Business Events Australia pin their success on understanding and distinguishing client needs and providing them with reliable and relevant information in order to fulfil their pursuits.

Speaking at Tourism Australia’s annual industry briefing in Sydney last week, Business Events Australia general manager Penny Lion informed e-Travel Blackboard of the importance of recognising disparity.

“Getting that message across about how different our overseas markets are - actually talking through why a business event buyer is different in New Zealand and what they’re looking for, versus someone in South East Asia and the cluster of countries within that region that vary greatly,” Ms Lion said.

“It’s all about knowing your customer... good old, basic sales mentality.

“Know who your customer is in each market and know what attracts them, to make decisions.”

Tourism Australia organised the market briefing, which drew more than 300 local tourism operators.

Business Events Australia has been working side-by-side with Tourism Australia to deliver and build upon their own futures campaign.

“Our potential is based on overnight visitor delegate expenditure; when we looked at it originally in 2009 it was $7.9 billion and our potential will be $16 billion by the year 2020 - we’re already at $12.5 billion so the industry is doing really well,” Ms Lion said.

“Visitor arrival numbers are up 14 percent for the year ending September, particularly from China, we’ve seen growth of 27 percent year ending September.”

Ms Lion said product development and targeted advertising is pivotal in procuring future business.

“We want to build that inspiration and give them the information - great business event proposals and pitch these ideas to their clients - then get them to sign and convert business.”

When it comes to contemporary communications, “we think we’ve got a lot of work to do in the social media realm for Business Events because a business events customer is still a consumer,” Ms Lion said.

“We are definitely keen to leverage off what Tourism Australia is doing but we also want to make sure it is the right strategy for the business events consumer – we’re doing a piece of digital research at the moment that will feed us the information to make sure we can do that.”