Slice Of Sydney

As the smoke clears, the draw of Australia’s largest city for both business and leisure comes into focus

- Sue White

With the coming of fall in the southern hemisphere, Australians are beginning to see some much welcome relief from the months of brutal wildfires which have tragically killed at least 33 people and scorched over 12 million acres since September. Despite the staggering losses, the country is determined to mount a comeback. And Sydney as a meetings and events destination is set to play a large part.

It’s hard to imagine how global icons like the Sydney Opera House and Bondi Beach could be anything but a positive for those in the tourism game, but when you are building a business brand for a city like Sydney, its popularity as a leisure destination does present the occasional difficulty.

“Sydney has a strong reputation globally and that’s been built on a leisure brand: people think of Sydney Harbour and the icons in Sydney,” says Kristian Nicholls. He would know; Nicholls is the general manager (bidding) for the non-profit, government-backed organization Business Events Sydney (BESydney), an entity tasked with ensuring the business and meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) sectors realize Sydney’s strengths too.

As the state capital of New South Wales, Sydney operates in a reasonably stable political environment. It’s a credential worth mentioning given that at a federal level Australia has famously changed prime ministers six times in 12 years – five times if you count former PM Kevin Rudd only once. New South Wales also benefits from its status as a services-led economy, so the downturn in the resources sector – which has challenged locations like Western Australia – isn’t problematic.