Rotorua's Energy Events Centre marks its fifth anniversary this month and is being hailed a success.
Highlights of the five years since the 8255sqm centre opened in March 2007 include hosting two Trenz tourism expos in 2007 and 2008, picking up the Meetings conferences and incentives expo last year and serving as a fanzone during the Rugby World Cup.
Events & Venues sales and marketing manager Brett Jeffery said the centre had also served as a venue for other conferences, exhibitions, gala dinners, awards nights and sports events, with more than 500,000 people having used the facilities since they opened.
He put the success of the centre down to identifying a need, backing it up with research and modelling, getting buy-in from the community and the special features that "dictate the character or vibe".
"[These were all] needed to ensure we had a winner . . . and we have."
Clients always commented on features such as the fibreglass pou in the Wai Ora Spa Grand Hall, the history wall, the exterior fins and the red feature wall in the Bay Trust Forum.
But Jeffery said the physical attributes of the building, which can be divided into 10 separate spaces and host up to 5650 guests at a time, were only half the equation.
"Despite their obvious appeal, the centre's special features would be meaningless without the backing of the EEC's dedicated operations team, who provide clients with professional venue and event management services to ensure everything runs seamlessly, smoothly and without fuss."
The $28 million venue has given Rotorua a boost in the large conference market and Jeffery said one of the highlights for him had been being able help with events, such as Meetings 2011, which had to find new locations after the February 22 earthquake put Christchurch's facilities out of action.
Rotorua Convention Convention Bureau manager Denise Siviter said the extra capacity of the centre also created new opportunities in the association conference market, which tends to cater to large delegate numbers.
"It has allowed us to go after those conferences and in 2011 we saw growth of 122.1 per cent in that market."
Siviter said this was an excellent result, especially against a national benchmark of -10.4 per cent.
Association conference business has come from within New Zealand and from Australia and other international markets and she said it also contributed to the large increase in multi-day conventions in the city last year.
"Delegate expenditure increased by 54.4 per cent - that's an increase of more than $20m."
Siviter said total spend was estimated at between $64m and $100m.
FACTS & FIGURES
Since opening in March 2007, the Rotorua Energy Events Centre has hosted:
* 1500 events
* about 30 conferences a year
* 10 conferences of more than 1000 delegates each
* 500,000 people