By Gwen O’Toole and James Wells

Buoyed by the win this week of the Amway 2011 conference, Business Events Sydney (BESydney) CEO, Jon Hutchison has been awarded a prestigious Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Chairman’s Award for 2009 for outstanding contribution to tourism.
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Awarded by previous PATA Chairman, Janice Antonson, the awards were presented at the recent PATA Foundation Gala Dinner in Macau.

BESydney chief executive Jon Hutchinson

“It is a great honour to receive a PATA Chairman’s Award, and I thank the Pacific Asia Travel Association,” Hutchinson said. “My team at Business Events Sydney and I continue to strive in making contributions to the local and wider tourism community.”
 
Since his appointment of CEO at BESydney in 1996, Hutchison has been responsible for leading the team responsible for promoting Sydney as a business events destination, identifying new event opportunities and bringing them to Sydney.

“The message is that business event conferences, congresses and exhibitions, incentive programs, particularly from Asia are resilient by comparison to leisure tourism and by comparison to other industries,” he said. “By and large, these events have to take place due to the culture or requirement of the profession and they rotate due to corporate membership or activity.”  

“They have all of the elements that make them resilient – recessionary conditions don’t affect them that much.

Hutchison now has life membership with PATA – the Association’s highest honour given to an individual who has provided at least 15 years of outstanding voluntary service to organisation and wider tourism industry.