Conference delegates surge into Brisbane

Brisbane is exceeding expectations as a conference destination as two of the city’s major upcoming international business events report surging delegate numbers.

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said the two events would attract thousands of business visitors to Brisbane this month. The first of these, the RCOG World Congress 2015 - a joint event being co-hosted by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) - began Sunday 12 April. Additionally, the 40th IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) 2015, will start on 19 April.

“Both ICASSP and the RCOG / RANZCOG Event are expected to attract a combined number of more than 3900 delegates and conference exhibitors to Brisbane,” Cr Quirk said. “Both conferences will bring in many international business visitors with the RCOG / RANZCOG Event attracting participants from 47 countries and a massive 90 per cent of ICASSP’s delegates arriving from overseas. Business events are considered a high-yield sector with delegates spending on average five times more than the average international visitor and 46 per cent of them participating in pre and post-event tourism.”

Cr Quirk said the Brisbane Convention Bureau had worked closely with the conference organisers to grow the number of attending delegates and ensure they had a fantastic time in the city. “The Bureau offered a suite of in-kind destination marketing support, including assistance promoting Brisbane, pre-and-post event touring information, welcome signage at Brisbane Airport, onsite tourist information at both events and Airtrain travel discounts to assist delegate travel into the city."

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre (BCEC) General Manager Bob O’Keeffe said the economic, knowledge sharing, investment and tourism benefits of hosting such events present enormous value to Brisbane and Queensland. “BCEC works with local experts and organisations such as RANZCOG and the IEEE Queensland community to win these large bids for Australia and to ensure that it is Brisbane that reaps the benefits.”