Australia’s business events market faces similar challenges to the rest of the world; rising supplier costs, labour shortages and uncertainties around international travel. But there are also significant opportunities for growth. The industry is really rallying around social impact and sustainability commitments, with destinations and venues offering innovative solutions for attendees, the community and the environment, as we have seen in our destination focuses in this supplement.
Global PCO and event management agency Arinex has long been a leading player on the Australasian business events scene and its CEO Nicole Walker is a founding board member of the Australian Business Events Association (ABEA). CMW asked her about Arinex’s primary goals for 2025.
“A main corporate objective is to implement creative experiential activations into our events – challenging the status quo for event programmes. That may be through AR and technological enhancements to drive engagement, or providing innovative sponsorship opportunities, forging closer partnerships with local communities and working with socially responsible suppliers to leave positive a legacy for the destinations we work in,” says Walker.
And the 2025 calendar is filling up for Arinex. “We have seen most international and domestic conferencing lead times stretching out to close to pre-Covid timeframes; while inbound incentive groups are still confirming quite close to their travel dates,” says Walker. “There is a lot of interest in Australia for corporates, direct-selling companies and incentive organisers overseas, and the exchange rate with countries like the USA is very favourable for groups.”
Arinex considers itself to be a leader in the sustainability space. Walker again: “Given our far-flung place on the world map, there is a lot of appetite for low-carbon events to help balance delegate travel footprints. Even though we have been carbon neutral certified for 3+ years now, there is still so much to learn about, including new opportunities to minimise carbon emissions and how our supplier networks are levelling up to become more sustainable.”
Another challenge identified by the agency is recruitment, particularly as leaders try to meet the distinct needs and preferences of different generations in the workforce. Walker says Arinex tries to overcome this is via partnerships with tertiary education providers which can provide on-the-ground experience for undergraduates to give them a taste of the events industry. This, of course, can lead to permanent employment.
Arinex is also a champion of the new Right to Disconnect policy, in response to new government legislation, which give employees the right to refuse to read, monitor or respond to communications outside working hours.
“Rising costs have stabilised but last year was enlightening for us as client budgets can be set years in advance,” Walker adds. “With some supplier costs increasing by 20% from FY23 to FY24, it meant our team had to work hard to mitigate the financial implications.”
AI impact
“AI is already having a noticeable impact and it is a powerful way of working smarter,” says Walker. “We encourage staff to use it to reduce time-consuming tasks. We’re using GammaApp for presentation management and also NotebookLM to help save time on research and information-sharing. Other AI options we are trialling include TLDR for summaries, Scribe for instructions/ documentation and of course ChatGPT the built-in function in Microsoft Teams and Canva.”
“Our technology partner evexus has really been harnessing AI to make complex tasks simple, including registration design, which reduces setup time by up to 70%, and truly personalised attendee journeys, such as on-demand video content curated to user preferences or CPD score analyses that provide actionable insights,” Walker adds
