By Jill Innamorati-Varley

When the Business Events Australia (BEA) team at Tourism Australia invited a group of incentive and meeting planners from the UK to Perth and Ayers Rock last week, it was what BEA head, Joyce De Mascio, described as “putting business events back on centre stage”.

BEA last week hosted a Perth and Ulura famil for
a group of British incentive and event planners

Co-hosted by the Perth Convention Bureau and Northern Territory Convention Bureau and airline partner Emirates, the familiarisation was exclusively covered by Main Event magazine — a sister publication of SpiceNews.   

“Up until now, Tourism Australia’s take on the business tourism market had a leisure optic,” she said. “We were trying to compete in a cluttered marketplace and needed to find what distinguished us, to imbed the Business Events brand and in turn, bring the rest of the industry with us.”

The six incentive organisers plus escorts from Tourism Australia UK and Emirates UK flew into Perth, spending two nights at the Hyatt Regency Perth and two nights at Voyages Ayers Rock Resort’s Sails in the Desert, before returning to Perth for one night at Rydges Perth. 

Said Jaclyn Sammells of DBMT, who attended the tour: “The Uluru part of the familiarity certainly provided the right cultural note for me.”