International strategic event management agency, FCM Meetings and Events has released a White Paper – ‘Availability 2022 and beyond’ – anticipating a ‘busy year’ for the Australian MICE industry. With high vaccination rates (80.6% of Australia’s population is fully vaccinated), booster shots, borders open and reduced requirements for quarantine, the industry is looking forward to a strong recovery. Simone Seiler, general manager of FCM Meetings and Events, said: “With everyone in catch up mode after so many postponed events over the past two years, along with some Q1 events also being postponed, the market is expected to see demand peak later this year. “Some clients are also taking a ‘wait and see’ approach to Q2 and considering pushing events back into the latter part of 2022, which is increasing the squeeze on availability.” Nicole Tingey, director of industry consulting firm Clockwise, stated: “These groups were predominately choosing city-based locations with global hotel brands and residential conferences with people from their own state – while utilising hotel meeting rooms and venues. But there’s now confidence to consider booking interstate, and into a variety of venues.” Looking to the regional areas, which were the first choice of companies wanting to avoid cities during Covid-19, FCM figures show they are heavily booked for 2022. Event planners could benefit at looking outside of the peak seasons, which is the winter months for resort destinations like Port Douglas, while on the Gold Coast, winter is usually a little quieter. Popular locations in high demand over the next 12 months include:
- Tropical North Queensland
- Hamilton Island
- Tasmania
- Central Australia
- Perth
- Regional Victoria
- Gold Coast
- Darwin
- Lizard Island, Orpheus Island and Qualia on Hamilton Island – all upmarket incentive trip locations – are already heavily booked for 2022.
Hardy Kilimann, director of global sales at Marriott, said 2022 is the year that city destinations will be back on the agenda: “Over the past 18 months Marriott resorts did very well as bookings moved away from Central Business District (CBD) settings. So, the challenge now for the whole meetings and events industry is to work together to sell city destinations. “While leisure travel is up, we expect that corporate travel, which was 70% of our bookings before Covid-19, will take more time to rebound. So that means MICE customers will have the pick of CBD accommodation offerings,” Kilimann added. To download the full White Paper, please click here.
