Melbourne: The city that knows how to host a good time

Melbourne's world-class events offerings continue to grow, with an estimated 9,000 hotel rooms expected to come on stream by 2024, doubling the number of rooms since 30 years ago. Many of the new rooms will belong to the ultra-luxury category, attracting incentive organisers.

Many are situated in the Central Business District (CBD) or along the Southbank, stretching along the Yarra River from Melbourne proper to the overflow city of Port Phillip, providing meeting and convention planners with a dizzying array of options.

Melbourne's appeal to meeting organisers is not just limited to its accommodation options. The city also boasts unique, heritage and purpose-built meeting venues, a variety of incentives options, cultural diversity, and a reputation as Australia's food and wine capital.

With sustainability now a non-negotiable factor in the events industry, the CBD’s and Southbank’s walkability is a winning feature. Some hotels on the Yarra riverside even offer water taxis to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC). Fun, convenient and environmentally sound. Delegates can also take advantage of the city’s tram network, which has two free hop-on-hop-off routes, covering many of the central sites of importance.

The city’s popularity with Asian meeting and incentive groups is well established. Melbourne is multi-cultural, welcoming and above all safe.

Julia Swanson, CEO of the Melbourne Convention Bureau, emphasises the long-term importance of Asian corporate business to the city and sees new opportunities on the horizon, “We have some significant groups coming from India, so that's that's an important emerging market, and we have increased services recently from Vietnam and also Melbourne to Jakarta. Indonesia's a very significant neighbour of ours and something of an economic powerhouse in the region.”

Melbourne has long been popular with Asian super-incentives, some totalling five figure groups, and the MCB is naturally enthusiastic about China’s reopening.

"We have an office in China that we kept open throughout the pandemic and maintained client relationships. We've had plenty of time to plan and talk to them about different itineraries. When things start falling into place with aviation, that's the last milestone we need to achieve and then start welcoming those groups back," Swanson says.

Where to meet

Organisers are unquestionably spoilt for culturally rich venues. The Arts Centre Melbourne is a culturally rich venue in Melbourne Arts Precinct, offering a range of spaces and capacities with exquisitely arranged pre-function areas, balconies and private rooms. Its largest space, The Pavilion, has a domed ceiling, gold-leaf interior and a wraparound balcony with views of the Yarra River and city skyline, which can hold up to 700 for cocktails and 350 theatre-style.

From the aesthetic to the athletic, Melbourne covers it all. Melbourne is known for its major sporting events such as the Melbourne Cup, Australian Open and Australian Grand Prix. These events can be used for high-end corporate hospitality and also provide unique venues for hire out of season.

The 30,000-seat Marvel Stadium on the harbour’s edge for example, which hosted the AIME 2023 welcome party can host banquets of up to 9,000 people, and has 15 indoor meeting spaces that can accommodate smaller groups. The stadium's retractable roof can be closed or opened in eight minutes, making it suitable for outdoor events. The stadium is also set to undergo major renovations with a focus on events.

The Melbourne Cricket Ground offers curated experiences, such as cocktails or sit-down banquets in private suites and terraces, while the smaller committee rooms are designed for smaller, more exclusive programmes.

Melbourne & Olympic Parks is home to the Australian Open and aside from dining on centre court you can also practice your serve on one of the show courts, while Flemington Racecourse even runs a millinery workshop, where team-building participants can try their hand at making hats and fascinators, essential female accessories for the Melbourne Cup season.

When the MCB describes the city as ”Australia’s knowledge and innovation capital”, it’s a reference to Melbourne’s portfolio of globally renowned universities and research institutes. This certainly helps position the city perfectly for the academic association sector. However, it also provides corporate organisers with some spectacular and fascinating venue options.

Centrally located on Collins Street, Monash University has a number of spaces for small and medium-sized seminars, lecture presentations and the like.

Bibliophiles and history buffs will love the State Library Victoria, originally built in 1854 but redeveloped and refurbished to offer 10 unique event spaces.

What to do

There’s no shortage of things for them to do or see. Arts and culture are embedded in Melbourne’s identity. The city overflows with galleries and museums, providing different canvases for planners looking to experiment creatively with their programme and event design.

For team-building, you can take a group for a street-art tour guided by a Melbourne artist, winding through the city’s laneways, with participants creating their own artwork to take home with them.

Melbourne also proudly boasts that per capita it outranks New York for the number of cafes, bars and restaurants. The successive waves of “new Australians” arriving in the city over the years brought with them their own cuisines, coffee cultures and culinary traditions making Melbourne a foodie paradise, whether casual dining in Flinders Lane or along Southbank, or a full-scale sit-down banquet in a five-star hotel ballroom.

For repeat visitors already familiar with the city itself, or for those with extended programmes, Melbourne offers a staging post for exploring regional Victoria. Here you can enjoy hot-air ballooning, helicopter rides or stunning scenic travels along the Great Ocean Road.

Trips to local Victorian vineyards are a favourite for would-be wine buffs or those who simply want to learn the basics of wine pairing, all this in combination with fine dining at locally centred farm-to-fork restaurants.

The Jack Rabbit Vineyard in Bellarine, Geelong, for example is a short ferry ride from Port Phillip terminal to Portalington Pier, and an even shorter helicopter ride back to central Melbourne. In between, the chefs and sommeliers will offer guidance for your tastebuds on which grape variety best matches your courses.

There’s something for treasure hunters too. Much of Melbourne’s early economy was based on the 1850s Gold Rush and a themed trip to Sovereign Hill allows groups to travel back in time to pan for real gold, tour a gold mine underground, meet and take selfies with historical characters in costumes as well as see skilled goldsmiths at work.

However, the real treasure is Melbourne itself. It’s city that refuses to stand still and continually pushes to reinvent itself.