Melbourne Convention Bureau is seeing huge traction from India market and its corporate incentive programme is driving even more traffic into Melbourne, explains Joanna Garrie.
Hazel Jain
Joanna Garrie, Director, Corporate Meetings & Incentives, Melbourne Convention Bureau (MCB), was in India recently to meet some of the key trade partners and corporate clients in Mumbai, Bengaluru and New Delhi. Speaking about the India market to M!CEtalk, she said, “We decided to significantly invest in the Indian market about a year ago. Coming out of COVID, we understood that there is a big opportunity for us here in India. We therefore decided to scale up what we were doing here. This is our first sales mission but we do have a representative agency in India.”
These three cities offer the most opportunities for MCB. “Maybe further down the track, we will expand into other cities. We have direct air services from New Delhi into Melbourne which makes it a very important market for us. Hopefully, we will have one out of Mumbai as well. Since we started our engagement last year, we have seen a huge success. We are a part of Visit Victoria which has been very active in the Indian market through Beautiful Planet for many years,” Garrie added.
She explained that MCB noticed that the M!CE side of the business from India was starting to increase and the Bureau wanted to make sure that it got maximum business by being active in this market. “We get a lot of incentive interest from the India market. Multi-level marketing companies, insurance companies, car sales companies did quite well during COVID. We are also seeing a lot of interest by companies in rewarding their staff and they are looking for unique destinations to do that. We have a financial incentive programme for corporate clients with 150 people or more. Australia is a long-haul destination and we do like to help offset the costs of travelling into Australia,” Garrie pointed out.
Troy Stasinowsky, Director, Sales & Marketing, MCG Events, was also part of the delegation. He met M!CE agents and inbound tour operators to showcase the possibilities at the MCG for business events for international groups. “The stadium can be activated for business events apart from cricket matches. So, they can attend a cricket match here, do the famous tour of MCG but what we really want to make everyone aware of is the different business events and experiences that we have created for the incentive market. We want to talk to them about the gala dinners they can hold across the multiple spaces within the stadium, the immersive tours, as well as the access to the Australian cricketers who can appear at their events,” he explained.
