Sunshine Coast wins award at Meetings Expo

Business Events Sunshine Coast (BESC) wowed the business events industry at the Asia-Pacific Incentives and Meetings Expo (AIME) held in Melbourne earlier this week. BESC’s new naturally refreshing design has won the “Best Innovative Stand” award for originality and impact created.
Sunshine Coast Mayor Mark Jamieson attended AIME for a day this week showing support for the BESC team and highlighting the importance of selling the Sunshine Coast as a premium business conference, meeting and incentive destination.
“The Sunshine Coast is hard to beat as a place to meet, to do business and to enjoy some of the best recreational time in the nation, if not the world,” he said.
“Put simply, we have a huge natural advantage over most regions – we have the locations, we have the services, we have the climate, and we have the lifestyle.
“I saw the stand. Maybe I’m biased, but it was bound to win – it’s our natural advantage at work.
“Well done to the team.”
BESC Manager, Pippa McCreery said, we are lucky enough to have a stunning destination, so we have greatly increased the use of imagery on our new website and in the 13/14 planner guide.
“A lot of effort has gone into creating a content-rich, user friendly website that focusses on meeting visitor needs. The ever-evolving pace of digital technology has changed the way we research and organise events, but overwhelmingly feedback indicated that print reigns when it comes to the planner guide.”
The website provide a ‘one stop shop’ for event planners, with innovative features including an interactive mapping tool, a comprehensive news section including blog articles and a resource library containing image and video downloads.
“The 2013/2014 planner guide contains all the information needed to meet, sleep, taste and indulge on the Sunshine Coast. An exciting new inclusion features offsite event ideas to take advantage of the Sunshine Coast beaches, parks and foreshores. We have worked closely with Sunshine Coast Council to access these fabulous open spaces for events – so we are very excited about the increased creativity made possible by these new offsite options,” Pippa said.
Contributing to the “Best Innovative Stand” award at this year’s event, a local body artist showcased her talent on the stand, creating ‘walking sunshine’ billboards. BESC also gave away a weekend for two people to the Australian Body Art Carnivale event to be held in Eumundi on the Sunshine Coast in May.
In the largest presence ever, BESC was joined by 10 stand partners from the Sunshine Coast,
including: Australia Zoo, Mercure Kingfisher Bay Resort, Novotel Twin Waters Resort, Outrigger Little Hastings Street Resort & Spa, Palmer Coolum Resort, QLD Signature Events, RACV Noosa Resort, Ramada Hotel & Conference Centre, Sheraton Noosa Resort and Spa, and The Events Centre, Caloundra.
AIME provides the business events/tourism industry with the opportunity to conduct face-to-face business with 3200+ hard-to-reach event ‘decision-makers’ such as professional conference organisers, corporate and association event planners and trade media from Australia, New Zealand, Asia Pacific, UK, Europe, South Africa and the Americas.
Business Events Sunshine Coast is the convention bureau for the Sunshine Coast, and a division of the regional tourism organisation, Sunshine Coast Destination Ltd (SCDL).
To view the new website visit: www.businesseventssunshinecoast.com.au