Macquarie Point stadium would turn Hobart into conference mecca: Business events expert

A business events specialist says Hobart deserves a bigger slice of the $35bn sector and the proposed Macquarie Point stadium could be the key to unlocking that potential.

Hobart's proposed AFL stadium at Macquarie Point. Picture: Macquarie Point Development Corporation

The proposed Macquarie Point stadium could transform Hobart into a mecca for conferences and give the capital city a bigger slice of the country’s $35bn business events pie, a veteran of the sector says.

Nell Harrison, the managing director of the Association Specialists, which helps organise and co-ordinate major business events across Australia, said Tasmania “gets a little bit left out” when it came time for organisations to book their annual conferences.

She said the decision around where to hold a business event ultimately came down to “size and scope” and smaller cities like Hobart, Adelaide, and Canberra were attractive due to the expense associated with hosting a conference in Melbourne and Sydney.

The Association Specialists managing director Nell Harrison. Picture: Supplied

However, Ms Harrison pointed out that Hobart lacked a big enough venue to accommodate some of the larger events she helped organise.

“Tasmania is seen as a great destination – people want to go there. But at times it just doesn’t have that capacity and so it takes it almost out of that rotation,” she said.

Ms Harrison said the redeveloped Kardinia Park in Geelong had made the regional city a magnet for conferences, whereas it was previously “never even considered as somewhere to go”.

“But [Geelong] did a really good job of going to market, they did a really good job of what Tassie are doing now. It’s just opened up that other option [for events],” she said.

“If Geelong works and people still have to travel to get to Geelong, then Hobart definitely is going to work.”

Renders showing the relocated Goods Shed at Macquarie Point, to make way for a multipurpose stadium. Picture: Cox Architecture

Ms Harrison, who has 25 years’ experience in the business events sector, said if a conference had more than 750 attendees, Hobart did not currently make sense as a destination for the organisers.

“The flexibility of [the Macquarie Point stadium] has massive potential,” she said.

“Tassie is sort of missing out on … the $35bn contribution of the business events sector to the Australian economy – and Tasmania should have a bigger bite of that.”

According to Ms Harrison, bringing bigger and more frequent conferences to Hobart would pump money back into local businesses and the community, given that business events often used local suppliers.

“The economic impact is bigger than the actual venue itself. It will create more jobs, it’ll put business back into the businesses that surround that stadium,” she said.