New Zealand to target international business events sector

Tourism New Zealand is to launch a new campaign aimed at the international business events market, leveraging off its highly successful 100% Pure New Zealand tourism campaign.
The new campaign, 'Beyond convention', will launch during the remainder of 2012 in the key markets of North America, China, South Asia and Australia.
Launching the campaign, Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) Chief Executive Kevin Bowler explained "we wanted to find a space in the market where we could add value and not compete with others who were already doing a great job, and to leverage New Zealand's competitiveness in this space by working collaboratively with other people."
The theme of the new campaign is to promote New Zealand as a unique destination, whether it is a conference, convention or incentive trip.
TNZ General Manager Marketing Communications Justin Watson added "the campaign will be rolled out across a range of related concepts such as 'Beyond the meet and greet' and 'Beyond the cityscape'."
Bowler concluded "Tourism New Zealand's involvement in the new campaign is part of its overall strategy of increasing the number of high value international visitors to the country, with international business visitors spending around three times more than leisure visitors.
"We think increasingly from a tourism and inbound international visitor perspective, high yielding visitors is the space we really should be placing most of our energy." Bowler said.
The announcement followed the recent two-day Meetings 2012 convention, a trade show aimed at promoting New Zealand's multi-million dollar business tourism industry to the world has led to some promising new connections being made.
Suppliers and operators of a diverse range of New Zealand venues, products and services took part in the event at Auckland's Sky City Convention Centre - promoting themselves to 665 professional conference organisers and decision makers from around the Pacific and South East Asia.
Conventions and Incentives New Zealand (CINZ)'s Chief Executive Alan Trotter has indicated that each year Meetings secures important business event dollars for the country.
Trotter explains "most conventions and events have a long lead-in time so the connections made here may not bear fruit for some years, but what we're hearing is that buyers have been impressed with what they've seen and are keen to do business with us in the future."
CINZ has confirmed that Auckland will play host to Meeting again next year, which will be held at the Sky City Convention Centre on 26th and 27th June.