TIA welcomes the announcement this week by Hon Matt Doocey, Minister of Tourism and Hospitality, for support of $100k for a co-funded partnership data programme with Business Events Industry Aotearoa to measure the economic impact of business events.

Business events are a high-value sector of the tourism system so getting quality data on how they work is an important step forward for the sector and for a wide range of other users who benefit from understanding the role and contribution of business events. This has been a major data gap for a number of years.    

This is the first grant from the Tourism Data Partnership Fund that has been established by the Tourism Data Leadership Group (TDLG) which was established to improve the data available to support tourism industry decision-making. The work of the TDLG is funded by the International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy.

TIA Chief Advisor, Bruce Bassett, who is on the TDLG, commented that the Business Events partnership programme is the first of several projects that are being advanced by the group, and more announcements can be expected over the coming months. “It is certainly an important step this get this first project underway, with more to follow.”    

Useful Links

• About Business Events Industry Aotearoa
• About the Tourism Data Leadership Group
• Media release - Data set to quantify how business events benefit tourism