Brisbane, Queensland @ Tourism Australia

New research indicates positive news for domestic business events - February 2022

Tourism Australia’s latest research on domestic decision makers’ attitudes towards restarting business events confirms that despite the impact of COVID-19 restrictions towards the end of 2021, businesses are largely positive about the future of business events.

Eighty per cent of businesses claim they have had to postpone or cancel an event that was scheduled between October and December 2021. Encouragingly most of these events have been rescheduled within the next 12 months and 1 in 4 have been rescheduled within the next 3 months.

Sixty-seven per cent of businesses are planning events in the next 6 – 12 months, up 5 per cent from October. And whilst the proportion of decision makers planning events for the next 12 – 24 months has dropped slightly (down 7 per cent from October to 74 per cent), it still remains strong. It suggests that businesses are increasing focus on the short term, with 7 out of 10 corporate decision makers expressing the need to simply ‘get on with it’ when it comes to living with COVID-19 and the challenges it brings.

For decision makers planning events in the next 12 – 18 months or sooner, there is a clear appetite to run larger scale events such as incentive programs as well as state-level and national conferences. Sixty per cent of businesses claim future events will involve some form of travel, with appetite for interstate travel still high, and 55 per cent plan to run their events face-to-face.

For businesses that are planning to hold events in the future, there are positive indications regarding the number of events, allocated budget and the number of attendees – at least 81 per cent of these businesses claim these metrics will remain the same as pre-pandemic levels or increase.

However, COVID-19 still remains an influencing factor on decision making. As the rollout of COVID-19 boosters continues, decision makers are mindful of the COVID-19 vaccination policies of venues, citing it to be the main factor influencing their decision making when planning interstate events.

The seventh wave of research surveyed 461 people either solely or partly responsible for event decision making between 24 January – 7 February 2022.