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With record numbers exhibiting this year the 14th Asia Pacific Incentives & Meetings Expo proved fruitful for the majority of participants, many recording strong business leads over the two day event. Conventions & Incentives New Zealand Australian manager, Sharon Auld, said she found AIME 2006 a “most enjoyable” experience.
“The New Zealand stand had a consistent number of buyers coming by over the two days and I felt I had the opportunity to speak with everyone who visited,” she said.
“New Zealand’s investment as a country particpating at AIME is quite large if you take into account all the regional stands and our position, right in the middle of the exhibition, is a good vantage point. AIME also gives us as a country the opportunity to see how other countries are marketing themselves.”
Sales executive – international for Vbase Venue Management Group Ltd, Jo Robinson, commented favourably of the experience.
“I think it’s fantastic. The buyers we saw were very good quality, and we had a full schedule of appointments throughout,” she said.
Ms Robinson said she was so busy she didn’t get her first break on day one until 12.30pm and it wasn’t until around 2.30pm on the second day that she had time to take a breather. She said while some people may say the show was not good for them she believes it comes down to pre-planning.
“You have to put the work into your pre-scheduled appointments before the show starts to make sure you see the people you want to see. We did that and it’s paid off.”

Melissa Craig from Te Puia in Rotorua however, was less than positive. She said it was her first AIME representing Te Puia which has exhibited for a number of years now.
“It’s been interesting,” she said.
“It’s different to every other trade show I’ve done. It’s very different to Meetings [in New Zealand].”
She said many of the pre-scheduled appointments she had were poorly matched, with many buyers from the United Kingdom, the United States and Europe.
“I haven’t had a high volume of Australian buyers. You find that you have to sell New Zealand as a destination and then your attraction [because some international buyers are less aware of what New Zealand has to offer].”
She said Te Puia was unsure at this stage whether it would be returning to AIME in February because it would fall in the same financial year.

“Ideally we’d like to be back at AIME next year. We’ve got a big development happening on-site with a grand opening in March.”
Exhibitor Feargal O’Conner from the Duxton Wellington, said he found the quality of buyers ranged from “very good” to “very bad”.
He, Elsa Bradbury of the Wellington Convention Centre and Kristyn Liddelow of Te Papa, would like to see a “pay per meet” format for pre-scheduled appointments. While exhibitors have the opportunity of having up to about 30 buyers in their pre-scheduled appointments programme for the two days the reality was that some may have half this number.
“We only want to pay for the number that we see,” the group said.
“If they could guarantee that we would have 24 appointments then that would be okay.”
There was also some concern about the layout of the New Zealand stand as a whole. Some believed it appeared disjointed because it was spread over exhibition rows. Project manager of the Wellington Convention Bureau, Eleanor Currier, was happy with her pre-scheduled appointments.
“The pre-scheduled appointments we had have been really good. They want to know about Wellington; they were switched on about what New Zealand has to offer,” she said.
“I think we’re a little bit disappointed about the number of walk-bys [day visitors]. At the end of the day it’s [attending AIME] all about making relationships.”
She said determining a return on investment was hard for one single event because it may take a few years of relationship building before the investment paid off. She said you might meet with a client three or four years running before they had a piece of business for Wellington.

Ms Currier said in the future Wellington may look at reducing its number of exhibitors and increasing its bureau stand, perhaps having two streams of appointments going at the same time, saving money for smaller operators but not diminishing Wellington’s presence.
She said she was concerned that the focus of AIME had changed from an Asia Pacific exhibition to an international one.
“I mean, what the hell’s Europe and America doing here? If this is going to be the way it is then they really need to extend the net to hosted buyers as well.”