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A conference might get delegates through the door, but rarely they want to spend their whole trip indoors. It’s what happens after that Auckland’s Convention Bureau (ACB) is really banking on.
Ken Pereira, head of the Auckland Convention Bureau says “Outside of the convention centre, delegates are really wanting to go out and experience the city, experience our culture, sample our food and do visitor experiences.”
To make that easier, Ken says they’ve created a delegate offer.
“We work with our destination partners, and we curate special offers exclusively for business delegates. “For example, the Hui Pass (which is used as a mechanism to support business events delegates to experience Tāmaki Makaurau outside the conference room) is exclusive for delegates, we’ve also got visitor experiences, dining experiences, curated all in one place on a webpage that a conference can then dispatch out to their event database, their event delegates and then they can book directly with our destination partners.”
The benefit, he says, runs both ways. “What this does is it gives us a good connection point for our destination partners to see impact from the type of work that we do,” Ken says. “It gives visitors the opportunity to meaningfully sample and engage with everything, the wonderful things that we have to offer our destination partners.”
It’s part of how Auckland wins conferences in the first place. Ken says “International conferences don’t just pick a destination because they like it. Traditionally we work with academics or sector leaders and encourage them to make for a conference in their sector and specialise to come and do it,” he says. “So that’s where we begin, we work locally to really educate them on everything that we have to offer, and we do it with care and concern for our beautiful city.”
From there begins a more formal process. “Then you go into bidding for the conference,” Ken says. “All of this has to show through our bid documentation, so there’ll be an executive council voting on picking destinations, we’re competing with other world class cities, so it has to shine through, how special a place like this is and our Manaakitanga has to come through that process too.”
Once Auckland is earmarked, the real test begins. “Once we select it as a destination, traditionally there’s a site visit with the executive council to make sure that we’ve got the facilities ready, that we’ve got hotel rooms etc, but then they also want to try and understand the culture of the city, so we work with them to understand why,” he says. “Every city’s got a convention centre, every city’s got hotel rooms, so how does Auckland stand out and that’s where our people try and get them to engage and encourage them to work with our local industry, our local people, everyone from restaurants, through to taxi drivers, it all shines through.”
With 75 events now secured for Auckland including some, but not limited to events like the International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) in July 2026 – estimated to bring 2500 delegates, the International Confederation of Principals Convention (ICP) in September 2026, estimated to bring 1600 delegates and the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) July 2028, estimated to bring 2000 delegates.
Ken says two in particular stand out to him.
“I’m excited about all of them, but there’s a few special ones in there. One is Microbial Ecology, the Society of Microbial- ISME20 is the conference, and I’ve been part of their journey for six or seven years. I’ve been working with two wonderful academics from the University of Auckland, who’ve been on this journey with us, and now that event will happen here in August so it’s been a level of love to see this whole conference go through COVID complications, picking another destination because of that, but now they’re finally going to be here in Tamaki Makaurau. he says.
“And the Intelligent Transportation Society conference- ITS 2026 will also be here (in July) as a city we’ve invested in a fantastic city rail link, so it’s wonderful to now bring transport- tech and transport and city plans into our city, and to be able to show the investment that we’ve made, but also learn from world-class experts and how they apply transportation systems in their studies and what can we learn from them.” Ken says
