South Australia Celebrates First Face-to-Face Business Exchange in 2021

It is a much-anticipated and important annual South Australian destination event business exchange for domestic business event planners and members of the Adelaide Convention Bureau (ACB). It has a solid reputation for successful transactions, scoping and planning of business events. The sudden Perth COVID lockdown is not going to halt it.

“Frankly, if we stop planning for future business events in South Australia – an incredibly safe State at managing COVID and with Australia’s only visitor end-to-end COVID SA fe plan - then we are failing to understand how well we must be prepared for a post vaccine COVID national recovery,” says ACB Chief Executive Damien Kitto.

“Everything you plan early in 2021 means you have to stay nimble and adroit at reconfiguring,” said Mr Kitto. “You simply have to accept clusters, snap lockdowns, border restrictions are our unfortunate new normal for now, and work round them. For Destination South Australia we have done exactly that.”

Mr Kitto said that while WA delegates would be unlikely to now join the ACB guests and exhibitors, there was an eagerness from clients in Queensland, NSW and Victoria to travel to Adelaide and again meet – socially distanced – face to face.

For those unable to attend or still reticent to travel interstate, Destination South Australia was prepared as a state-of-the-art hybrid event, and would ensure those joining the event virtually would be pleasantly surprised by how rewarding for their business the experience was.

“Nothing beats having face to face communication for business development and event decisions,” said Mr Kitto. “But, for some that continues to be too complex to achieve and so the ACB’s responsibility to event clients and our members is to do everything possible to mitigate when face to face is not possible, hence glitch-free high-quality hybrid planning is critical.”

The ACB is committed to the business event sector recovering quickly and through that more economic growth for South Australia. “We cannot afford not to work toward a post-COVID recovery. Staying committed to holding Destination South Australia is therefore critical” said Mr Kitto.