Getting Down Under The Incentives Market

Team Australia Business Events Educational 2005 (TABEE) in its seventh edition held in Hong Kong celebrated Asia and specifically India as a market central to its incentive focus, reports Bhisham Mansukhani

TAIWAN WITH LOVE: Johnny Nee, regional manager, North Asia, Tourism Australia with the Taiwanese delegation

INDIA SMILES:M aggie White, with part of the Indian delegation -- the largest that TABEE has witnessed thus far

ALL THAIS THAT END WELL: The Thai Delegates featured here in their national dress

TRIULY ASIA: The Malaysian Delegation poses with Australian sellers at the gala dinner

Australia has captured the Indian outbound’s imagination for a long time but only recently has there been a culmination of the continent’s efforts to woo an increasingly important market. This was more than evident at TABEE, an event focussing on the incentive market, has been held across Thailand, Singapore and HongKong and serves as a purpose built forum for business to business (B2B) interaction between corporate buyers and suppliers from Australia. This year witnessed the participation of 40 corporate buyers and 46 travel agents who met with 40 Australian sellers including 10 convention bureaus. Some of the buyer countries represented apart from India were Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, China, Indonesia and Singapore. Some of the key Australian companies that participated were the Adelaide Convention and Tourism Authority, Brisbane Marketing’s Convention Bureau, Hedgehog Events, Cairns Convention Centre, Gold Coast Tourism, Dreamworld, Melbourne Convention and Visitors Bureau, Perth Convention Bureau, Tourism Whitsunday Convention Bureau and Hayman Island. The event saw vigorous business sessions unfold throughout the day with buyers scuttling from one meeting to the next while evenings featured gala dinners that set the tone for networking.

Team building games prior to the afternoon sessions helped temper the business environment. “TABEE has two key focuses, firstly to build relationships and reaching out to the corporate buyers and media by putting together a showcase of what we can offer. This show is representative of our product and ability. It is not just an emotional throw away line. The Australian sellers are also able to size up the kind of demand that is out there in different markets. Asia is not one homogenous region,” said Greig McAllan, general manager Asia, Tourism Australia.

Duly Asia

Australia hosts 5,000 incentive programmes a year of which Asia accounts for 75 per cent — 39 per cent out of South East Asia and 36 per cent, North Asia. However, South East Asia also generates 41 per cent of the spend while North Asia contributes only 21 per cent of the spend. Any which way, as Ian MacFarlane, director marketing, Tourism Australia, put it, ‘Asia is central to our incentives market strategy.’

“After a 14-month review of the business tourism space and how it contributed to Australia’s tourism environment, we found that 19.2 million delegates attended meetings and conventions in 2003, of which 19 million were resident Australians, which puts the international figure of 200,000 although they bring with them an additional 900,00 accompanying family members and the collectively spend more than one billion AU$ and 2.2 million nights. The incentives market shows a markedly different picture. While the country draws 236,000 inbound incentives who spend AU$ 40 million and spend 1.3 million nights in Australia. The incentive market is therefore one with the promise of great upside. And TABEE serves as an instance of how we want to make our distribution channel more effective and in our market, the real wheel of the industry goes round when the sellers and buyers are put together. That is our our key principle and fragmentation of this segment presents a great challenge, which TABEE meets ably,” MacFarlane said.

India Next

Although India’s 54000 tourists are dwarfed by the some 1.4 million Asian visitors that Australia recieved in 2003, the growth of 22 per cent is more than double the regional average of 10 per cent. By Sepetember 2004, Indian visitors had spent an estimated AU$ 184 million on their trip to Australia and another AU$ 106.7 million while in Australia.

Paying rich tribute to the Indian economy and correlating it to the health of the country’s incentive market, McAllan, during TABEE’s innaugural press address, said, “When you’ve got an economy that is booming, inevitably there are companies who have overachievers to reward and that is the market to focus on. In that respect, Japan can be juxtaposed with markets like India and Korea. Korea and China are our top tier markets which doesn’t mean we will not invest in the Indian market. It is the sheer size of the market that demands a certain level of investment. Though India has a relatively small base at the moment, it has the capacity to grow to be as large as China as an incentive market. It’s just that India is playing catch up to China as its economy opened up late.”

McAllan was quick to assert that Australia would not go seeking the volumes business. “We’d rather have 10,000 Indians coming to Australia, spending the levels of money they’ve typically been know to do. The moderate spenders are equally welcome but we will promote to the high yield segments. The investment into India has increased almost four-fold in the last one year alone. This is significant as it is interlinked with the heightened interest of the Australian government in India.” Maggie White, regional manager south and south east Asia, Tourism Australia, who has championed Australian promotions in India and has come to be known as the face of Tourism Australia for the Indian travel trade, observed some unique trends. “India is an emerging market in many respects and incentives is one of the more visible aspect of it. Four of the top tour operators have dedicated considerable effort to the destinations. On our part, we have been indentifying the Indian traveller’s needs in terms of dietary requirements and a certain level of service. The much reformed aviation scenario out of India has also played a crucial role. The profile of the incentive groups however remains high yield and low volume which is characteristic of Australia for all its incoming incentive groups. That is our target audience,” White said.

White also pointed out that TABEE’s seventh edition had recieved the largest delegation from India ever — five corporate buyers and two travel agents from India have participated. So far, India had been represented by just two delegates from the corporate and agent community. The Preferred Aussie Specialist Agent Scheme whereby all agents selling Australia undergo a comprehensive immigration training programme has so far enlisted 54 agents.

McAllan maintained a bullish approach for India’s incentive market, saying, “India is poised for huge growth. The Chinese and Korean markets were at the same levels that India is now at, at some point of time but what I’ve observed of late is that the period of maturation for the newer markets is getting shorter so India could reach critical mass soon. In light of the forthcoming AU$ 14 million investment into the promotion of Australia to the Asian incentive market, I would expect the segment to grow at an average of 15 per cent year on year.”