The 28th Annual AACB Conference commences in Hobart next week from 6 - 8 September.  John O'Sullivan, General Manager and CEO of Tourism Australia will be addressing delegates with his presentation 'Towards 2020 and Beyond'. John will share the latest information on the tourism industry's performance and future opportunities to 2020 and beyond. He will reveal Tourism Australia's strategies for converting the appetite for Australia's tourism experiences in order to grow visitation and counter the challenges of an increasingly cluttered and competitive global travel market...VIEW THE FULL PROGRAM

Australia’s visa system has served the nation without significant change for almost 30 years. Over that time, global migration patterns have changed and so have Australia’s needs. Australia’s visa system is in many respects an artefact of a bygone era and is ill suited to this future. The visa system is highly complex, with 99 individual visa types.

The Turnbull Government are undertaking a public consultation on transforming Australia’s visa system to simplify and better align it with Australia’s long-term economic and social priorities...READ MORE

Tourism Australia's dedicated business events team is always looking for new product and destination news to help show the world why There’s nothing like Australia for business events. Get in touch with the content team and find out more about their work to showcase Australia to international business events planners on the Business Events Australia website. Share your news with bea@tourism.australia.com today.

Andrea Gardi, Senior Project Manager at Tourism Region 4 in Canada has won the opportunity to attend the AACB Annual Conference due to take place next week. The AACB extended the scholarship opportunity to Destinations International’s 2017 30 under 30 class as part of an extended partnership with Destinations International. We look forward to welcoming Andrea to Australia. 

Australian Bureau of Statistics - Year-on-year comparison of visitors arriving to attend a convention/conference for the 12 months to June 2017 shows an overall increase of 10%. There were a total of 17,400 arrivals in June 2017 whose main purpose of coming to Australia was a convention/conference. This translates to a 27% increase from June 2016 (13,700). ABS Overseas Arrivals and Departures, Australia, June 2017

AACB Staff Conference,
Henry Jones Art Hotel, Hobart
6 - 8 September 2017

Alice Stampede, Alice Springs
21 - 24 September 2017

Sell TNQ, Cairns
17 - 21 November 2017