Keep the ball rolling on events
Attracting big-ticket sport and business events – including the Olympics
THE foot has been allowed to drop off the events tourism throttle despite there being not a shred of debate about the sector’s critical importance to the Cairns economy.
The numbers speak for themselves – events hosted at the Cairns Convention Centre in 2018 created 133,784 room nights and contributed about $80 million in direct spending to the regional economy.
That is just one venue – and the potential for growth is astounding.
Cairns Regional Council Mayor Bob Manning believed the fervour of attracting – and keeping – big events had slackened in recent times.
“I think we’ve fallen off the pace a bit,” he said.
Cr Manning said Cairns should be getting big NRL games, world-class stage and musical productions, and a piece of everything the big cities enjoyed.
There is no project more critical to driving a renewed wave of business tourism than the $176 million Cairns Convention Centre upgrade.
The centre will close from June to November for expansion and refurbishment works.
It will reopen to conferences in November, but work will continue until early 2022.
Cairns Convention Centre general manager Janet Hamilton said there was a packed calendar for the short period the venue would be open this year, including the Australian Orthodontic Congress in March with 500 delegates, Trucking Australia with 500 attendees in April, and the ever popular PBR in May.
“When we open again in November, we will host two large conferences of 1000 delegates,” she said.
“Once completed the expansion will allow us to host two to three events at the same time and larger national and international events, bringing more people to the region.
“The new meeting spaces are expected to return between $30 and $50 million per year in additional spend from delegates.”
Sports tourism already generates massive spikes on the visitation graphs but there is potential for much more.
Future Tourism number-cruncher Bernard Salt said the city should aggressively position itself as an event host city for any 2032 Olympics bid.
“Surfing is being introduced at the Paris Olympics, and they are not having the surfing event in the southern city of Biarritz,” he said.
“They’re having it in Tahiti. “If the French can do it in bloody Tahiti, surely we can have mountain biking or something else in Cairns.”
Cairns Mountain Bike Club president Craig Nissen backed the call but said major opportunities were being ignored regardless of the Olympics.
Cairns hosted the UCI World Championships in 1996 and 2017, and the world cup – qualifier for the bigger event – in 2014, 2016 and 2017.
“Instead of making a legacy and spending $60,000 a year to maintain the tracks, they just left,” he said.
“The courses are already here – it’s just a matter of bringing them up to current standard. We just need support to bring the events.”
Business event visitors to Cairns typically spend about $410 per night, compared to $200 for leisure visitors, and directly inject an annual $66 million into the economy on conference days alone.
Tourism Tropical North Queensland general manager Rosie Douglas said up to 70 per cent of delegates returned for a holiday, making business events a valuable marketing tool for the destination.
Cr Manning said the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair had the potential to become an internationally renowned event, and part of a rich cultural tourism tradition underpinned by the perennially unfunded Cairns gallery precinct.