by David Perks
I am an employee of WellingtonNZ (aka the Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency). I am seconded to the Wellington City Council and lead the Business Events Wellington team; we work out of Te Papa. The working relationship between these three parties is critical to Wellington’s success as a destination for conferences and this has been the case for many, many years.
Business Events Wellington (BEW) is a longstanding division of WellingtonNZ that works to attract conferences of all types to Wellington. Those conferences might take place in one of the civic venues operated by WellingtonNZ, in Te Papa, at Victoria University, the stadium, or indeed at a hotel type venue.
In mid 2021, as we observed the impact of the pandemic on the Tākina – Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre project, we realized that having the BEW team focus more specifically on conferences that would fill Tākina and also bring bigger economic impact to Wellington made good sense, and that because of time lost due to the pandemic, having that team seconded to the Wellington City Council as part of the core Tākina project would also make good sense.
BEW continues to act as the destination attraction team for all business events – but focusses on bigger business for the city.
Conferences are secured for Wellington in many ways; we know when we are winning by looking at how many conferences/delegates/room nights we secure for Wellington through competitive bids we make to host events. Since mid 2021, 33 competitive bids have been won which will bring somewhere in excess of 25,000 delegates to the city; there’s another 28 bids we’ve got out there awaiting a response.
I read with interest your article ‘Co-operation or competition?’ that discusses the positioning of WellingtonNZ, the Wellington City Council (WCC) and Te Papa in regard to the soon to be opened Tākina.
The Tākina project is owned and invested by the WCC but also one that requires the working together of the Council, WellingtonNZ and Te Papa every day to succeed in delivering all that it promises for Wellington.
A little bit of history.
Prior to the closure of the Town Hall in 2013, convention/conference business had been worth around $100m to the capital each year. The closure of the Town Hall and the simultaneous announcement that the government had made an agreement with SkyCity for the development of the NZ International Convention Centre in Auckland, and that a Convention Centre was part of the re-build plans for Christchurch, meant that the expenditure of conference delegates to Wellington was put at risk.
These investments being committed by the government also caused Wellington to consider its situation and explore the opportunity for a dedicated Convention Centre that would meet the expectations of international and large domestic conference events. We looked at and worked on multiple solutions; ultimately these resulted in the project that became Tākina being signed off by Councillors in late 2018.
Tākina has three levels. The ground floor is public space that includes a new public walk-through between Cable and Wakefield Streets, and a Public Exhibition Gallery that will house the kind of exhibition that we know – from our experience over many years of working with Te Papa – Wellington residents enjoy, and also bring lots of other New Zealanders to the city.
The upper two floors have spaces that can host a conference of up to 1600 people, or simultaneously host two conferences of around 700 each.
During the exploration of what conference facilities were needed by Wellington, many questions were considered. One, answered, was how important was location. Wellington didn’t have the freedom of location choices that Christchurch offered and didn’t have the existing infrastructure that SkyCity had to build upon its sizeable business in Auckland.
Securing a location that was central and close to Te Papa provided Wellington with the opportunity of acquiring some of the same advantages that were had by Auckland and Christchurch. Whilst both WellingtonNZ and Te Papa were considered as the operators of Tākina, it was realized that maximizing the opportunity of proximity to Te Papa would be a route to success both in regard to operational efficiency, and for clients who could then use both the new spaces in Tākina and the many spaces in Te Papa as one venue for their conference. In effect Wellington ends up with a bigger Convention Centre.
With the new infrastructure in place, it also enables the Council to use each of its venues better and for the purpose for which they were built. This means more entertainment and sport (for which it was designed) at the TSB Arena; more theatre, opera and ballet at the recently reopened St James; and when it opens in the middle of 2023 as Wellington’s first dedicated conference venue, more conferences in Wellington at Tākina. Each of these will mean more things for Wellingtonians to go to, to participate in, and through increased visitation to enjoy enhanced economic impact from.
• You quite rightly ask about the intermixing of three terms – Convention, Business Events, Conference. The terms are effectively interchangeable and used variously internationally. We tend to use them in the same way as other places in New Zealand and Australia:
o Convention (Centre) is used as a describer of infrastructure
o Conference is used to describe multi day events that attract people from near and far
o Business Events is a broader term that also includes day meetings, more local meetings and trade shows etc.
We appreciate that this use might be a bit confusing, but for people ‘in the business,’ using our websites etc it’s the terminology they are used to.
• You’re also right to point out that the TSB is a lot larger than Tākina from a people capacity point of view. From an entertainment and sport point of view that’s great; but for conferencing that size isn’t required in our market which is driven by New Zealand and Australasian conferences and quite niche international conferences.
Why have WellingtonNZ as well as the council? This is a ridiculous waste of ratepayer funds.
Thanks for this explanation David. I was one of the councillors at the presentation that WellingtonNZ put on for us at the St. James. I’m interested in the results and value for money the WCC gets from its huge budget for WellingtonNZ so I’d like to meet with you sometime to discuss this.
What is the ‘huge’ budget for WellingtonNZ that Ray refers to? [WREDA’s Financial Summary for 2021-2022 shows expenditure of $27,218,051, of which staff costs were $12,771,155, and ‘investment in projects and events’ was $12,088,643. Revenue from its owners (80% from WCC and 20% from GWRC) was $19,424,796, with $7,943,255 of “other revenue” which includes management fees paid by WCC. WREDA is planning an increase in spending of $2.6m for the 2022-2023 year, and a further increase of $2.2m next year.]
David. The fact the you are employed by WellingtonNZ which is owned 80% by the WCC, and then seconded back to the WCC to lead BEW which is a division of WellingtonNZ, says everything about the shambles that is event attraction in Wellington.
Double dipping. Success can be redefined to mean anything. The conference centers we have were not used anywhere near to their full capacity so building an another was inane.
If the WCC is the tentacle of a bigger debt creation agency then it’s a success.
Staff costs of nearly $13 million seem excessive. Just how many staff are there and what is the salary structure? [As at 30 June 2020, WREDA employed 124 (2019: 128) full time equivalent employees. Eight of them were paid more than $170,000 per year, with one receiving $360,000. WREDA employed a similar number of casual employees in its Venues Wellington division.] In addition, how can such large increases in planned expenditure for this year and next be justified?
In order to bring events and business to the city we need to be attractive to those visitors. Like many things, promotion costs money.
Thanks for providing the figures. So $27 million a year and they want 10% more for this year. And most revenue is from WCC and GWRC! How very circular! I hope Ray votes against the 10% increase.
In the 2018 census, there were 75,201 households in Wellington. So at $27 million, that’s $362 for WREDA from every single household. Take that off our rates and that’s a 4%-6% savings right there.
Not quite sure what I’m getting for the $27 million. Someone here mentioned publicity, but that sounds like an awfully expensive lot of publicity. Is anybody on the Council other than Ray paying any attention to this?
What are 120 staff doing? I think I could do the job with 30…
Are we paying out all this money to fill overseas owned hotels with staff on work permits? How much does the local community actually benefit from these conferences or do we pay out more for the social costs. Plus the non green aspect of all those air miles.
JAB – those hotels still employ locals and buy goods and services from local companies. The people staying in the hotels (for the conferences) spend money to eat and drink at the local cafes, bars and restaurants – who in turn also employ local people.
Not long ago Wellington had more company head offices and graduate job opportunities than Auckland. Now the economic development agency and council priority seems to be on boosting the low skilled, low paid hospitality sector. Ratepayer money shouldn’t be spent in this way.
Barbs: looking at the productiveness of WellingtonNZ and the benefit to Wellington, I need to meet with them to understand more of what they do and their management, so until this happens, I won’t be voting any more money to them. The city needs to tighten its belt as we have no money and are borrowing at record levels although some of my colleagues still think we’re hiding the money tree somewhere.
WellingtonNZ could do with explaining their funding a whole lot better. I’m pretty sure the numbers above include the costs of Wellington Venues operations which I assume is funded by the “Other Revenue”.
Ray I absolutely think getting your head under the bonnet and understanding the funding and what they do with the funding is imperative. All Councillors should be similarly inclined.
Thank you Ray. As a WCC ratepayer on a pension I’m grateful for any relief in rate increases you can achieve.
