Does New Zealand have the will to compete for the events that matter most?

Entertainment on the surface, economics underneath

When Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston announced work on a National Events Strategy on 22 September, the framing was about concerts, conferences and civic spectacle. The reality is a tourism, hospitality, aviation and city-centre revenue play in a market where countries are actively poaching each other’s events.

The move follows an independent review that landed a blunt diagnosis. New Zealand is a capable host, but “the current events system lacks a clear long-term direction and a coordinated approach to funding and decision-making, making it harder to maximise the value events deliver”. Translation: we are leaving money on the table because nobody is running the play.

Why the sector is worth fighting for

This is not a niche indulgence. Research released in February 2026 found multi-day conferences and business events delivered $925 million in economic and productivity contributions in 2025, and that was described as a softer year amid global uncertainty. The breakdown runs across $412 million in delegate spending, $433 million in event expenditure and $80 million in companion spend.

The visitor quality argument is what should make business owners sit up. International delegates spent an average of $645 per day, with total spend per international delegate reaching $3,726 against $2,118 for domestic delegates. Ken Pereira, head of business events at Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, put it plainly, saying business visitors are worth about three times the average leisure tourist. Those conferences also generated roughly 1.5 million visitor nights nationwide spread across the calendar and the regions, not crammed into one peak weekend.

And the domestic figure is a sliver of the opportunity. The global business events sector is a US$1.8 trillion industry.

The infrastructure gap has closed

What has changed is capacity. Business Events Industry Aotearoa CEO Lisa Hopkins argued in June 2026 that new venues had transformed what the country could bid for. “It gives us the scope to bid for conferences that in the past we would not have been able to do,” she said, adding that the infrastructure to tap the trillion dollar market now exists.

The pipeline backs her. Tātaki Auckland Unlimited’s convention bureau had secured 76 business events through to February 2029, worth about $107 million, while Tourism NZ was chasing 110 conference bids worth a record $253 million in 2026/27.

The competitors are already joined up

Hopkins told Mike Hosking the morning after the announcement that “we’ve missed out on a lot of opportunities because we haven’t been as joined up as we should be”, and that a coordinated approach would put the country on much better footing against rivals already connecting sectors and leveraging major events.

BEIA has spent 2026 reframing the pitch. In its August manifesto, Hopkins argued the question was no longer whether business events matter but how they can support national economic priorities. At Meetings 2026 in June, she pushed the sector to move past delegate counts and hotel nights and start measuring productivity, trade, innovation and investment. The Tourism Policy Statement in June 2026 had already listed unlocking the value of events as one of eight core objectives, warning that fragmented investment dilutes impact.

Where the strategy could fall over

Here is the catch. The review models NZ$26 to 32 million in additional annual government funding to hit its targets, which could deliver 18,500 to 21,500 additional overseas visitors and support 150 more international bids worth NZ$350 million. Against that, the Government has committed a one-off $1 million top-up to the conference assistance programme and a process to write a strategy. The strategy itself does not yet exist.

The existing Major Events Fund is a contestable $60 million over five years, with mega events funded separately and the next secured one being the ICC T20 Cricket World Cup in 2028.

The diagnostic is right and the industry is genuinely capable. But coordination without money produces a glossy framework and little else. For a sector generating $925 million a year off a pipeline still being built, where each international delegate is worth nearly four domestic ones, the risk is not that the plan fails on merit. It is that Cabinet talks the language of economic infrastructure while funding it like a brochure. The next Budget will tell you which one this is.

Sources

• Building A Stronger Future For New Zealand Events (2026-09-22)
• “Really required”: Industry pleased with Govt’s plan to create coordinated events strategy (2026-09-23)
• New Zealand government to develop national events strategy (2026-09-22)
• Building a stronger future for New Zealand events (2026-09-22)
• BEIA calls for strategic role for business events (2026-08-10)
• Tourism Policy Statement Reinforces Importance Of Business Events (2026-06-25)
• Why NZ has a ‘real opportunity’ to tap into the trillion dollar global business events market (2026-06-18)
• Business events deliver big for NZ economy, new research shows (2026-02-16)