Conferences boost city's earnings

Events such as TRENZ, pictured at the Energy Events Centre last year, are helping cement Rotorua's reputation for business events.

Rotorua's claim to be New Zealand's coolest little conference hotspot is now supported by benchmark-beating growth.

Latest Convention Activity Survey (CAS) statistics released by Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) reveal there were 227 multi-day conferences held in Rotorua in 2015.

This represents a 13 per cent increase over the 2014 year and is more than double the 6 per cent national benchmark increase.

Rotorua had the third largest market share (9 per cent) of multi-day conference delegate days spent in the 13 CAS regions, beaten only by Auckland (35 per cent) and Wellington (17 per cent).

Destination Rotorua's business events manager Craig Murray said most conference activity occurred during the winter season and therefore made an important contribution to filling capacity at tourism businesses during the leisure market's low season.

"The Rotorua business events strategy is focused on further increasing Rotorua's market share of multi-day conference activity during the winter months. Rotorua already enjoys high demand from the leisure market during the summer months, so the business events team primarily focuses on building the market share of conferences held here over the winter season when there is spare capacity," he said.

There were more than 80,000 multi-day conference delegate days spent in Rotorua during the 2015 year, of which almost 70,000 days were estimated to be by visitors (the remaining 15,000 days were from locals attending the conferences).

Applying the latest Convention Delegate Survey average per night expenditure to the visitor delegate days spent in Rotorua, it indicates Rotorua's multi-day conference market generated more than $30 million during the 2015 year.

"To be double the national average is a great testament to the work and focus of the sector and hotels in Rotorua," said Blair Chalmers, regional Tourism Industry Association (TIA) hotel chairman for Rotorua.

Rotorua Lakes Council Economic Growth Portfolio lead, deputy mayor Dave Donaldson, said the Rotorua conference market was a high yield segment of the visitor industry which made it an appealing investment proposition.

"It's great to see the Rotorua conference market outperforming the national average. These results have contributed to investment decisions from our tourism businesses recently, and with more substantial investment projects on the horizon we can look forward to further growth in the months ahead.

"With Rotorua hosting TRENZ (New Zealand's largest travel trade show) later this year we have every reason to be optimistic that Rotorua's positioning as a premier business events destination will be further reinforced, resulting in continued success not only for our tourism industry but for the wider Rotorua business community as a whole."