The Hot Spot in Corporate Conference Venues: Destination Taupo: Taupo Has Taken off as a Corporate Conference Venue. the Number of Hotels, Motels and Meeting Venues Has Mushroomed. Why Are So Many Conference and Convention Organisers Making Taupo Their Destination of Choice?

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The New Zealand conference industry is thriving. The domestic market in particular is running at record high levels perhaps, as Conventions and Incentives New Zealand CEO Alan Trotter puts it; "reflecting the current robust state of the New Zealand economy".

And Taupo is grabbing more than its share of this new market growth. The reasons for this spurt in conference activity may have much to do with the buoyancy of our economy, but there are other more global factors which are undoubtedly playing a part.

New Zealand is increasingly seen as a safe and secure destination for business tourism, of which conferences are a major component. And if the world outside sees us as a rather more settled environment in which to meet and build strategies for the future, so we in turn seem less interested in seeking out exotic offshore destinations to stage our corporate get togethers.

According to Trotter, our international (business tourism) growth is increasing at around eight percent a year with lots of Australian interest in particular. Almost 60 percent of our annual 45,000 international conference arrivals hail from across the Tasman. Australians might call us the "Shaky Isles" but an ever increasing number of them see New Zealand as decidedly more settled than other Asian destinations for instance. The increasingly close economic and political ties between New Zealand and …