Tourism Australia’s latest wave of domestic research confirms that despite COVID-19 restrictions towards the end of 2021 and the challenging start to 2022 with the Omicron variant, businesses are largely positive about the future of business events.
In fact, 67 per cent of businesses are planning events in the next 6 to 12 months, up 5 per cent from October 2021. And whilst the proportion of decision makers planning events for the next 12 to 24 months has dropped slightly (down 7 per cent from October to 74 per cent), it still remains strong. This suggests that businesses are increasing focus on the short term, with 7 out of 10 corporate decision makers expressing the need to simply ‘get on with it’ when it comes to living with COVID-19 and the challenges it brings. However, the findings also show that COVID-19 remains an influencing factor in decision making. As the rollout of COVID-19 boosters continues, decision makers are mindful of the COVID-19 vaccination policies of venues, citing it to be the main factor influencing their decision making when planning interstate events.
Read the latest research on the Business Events website.