Non-residential conference premises in city centres pose a challenge to traditional hotel meeting spaces in Asia Pacific, according to the IACC.
The IACC points to Cliftons Conference Venues and Saxons Training Facilities, which both recently joined the association’s Australia Asia Pacific region. This brings the number of countries and territories where the IACC has members in the region to seven; it has 400 members worldwide.
Mark Cooper, the association’s global chief executive, says the changing membership profile indicates that more meeting planners are leaning towards a different type of venue to hotels as more business and training centres open.
“I think we can expect to see further development in the city located non-residential day conference venue concept,” says Cooper. “Our recent growth in membership in the region has been from venues in this category, and we see the demand for dedicated meeting venues in city locations increasing as clients turn their backs on traditional multipurpose hotel spaces when they need to be centrally located.
“We have seen this category of venue become established in cities like London, Paris, Sydney and New York and I foresee the same in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong in the next couple of years. However, there is still a strong demand for out-of-town residential venues for meetings and training as well.”
Copper says several criteria apply when evaluating new members for IACC and the association currently turns away as many applications as it accepts, in order to ensure that IACC-certified venues deliver consistent high-quality standards across the facilities of every member.
Martin Clapham, chief financial officer of Cliftons, which has premises in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong, credits IACC membership as helping widen the company’s exposure to meeting planners.
“Being a member of IACC allows us to grow our network of event and conference providers with the possibilities for collaboration across the globe seemingly endless,” says Clapham.
“Being a member of this growing association gives us the ability to learn from the success of others around the world, and for us to share our best practices too.”
Cooper adds: “Our newest members have been present at our conferences, including our Americas and European chapter events and they tell us that the ideas they have picked up from other members around the world has helped their businesses back home.”
