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As video conferencing struggles post-pandemic, the face-to-face Asia Pacific Incentives and Meetings Event (AIME), held this week in Melbourne, has been hailed as a success by buyers, exhibitors and by Melbourne Convention Bureau chief executive, Julia Swanson.

The post-pandemic recovery has outstripped expectations, Swanson revealed.

“I think we are largely in-line with pre-Covid levels at the moment, which is fantastic,” she told Global Travel Media.

“The rebound happened a lot faster than anyone expected. The domestic market has bounced back and the international kept going throughout the pandemic.

On the show floor at AIME

“Some of the major events we’ve got in our calendar this year were arranged pre-Covid. We’ve got Rotary coming in May, which is about 14,000 delegates and we’ve got some of those mega conventions that attract people from over 100 countries.

“What we will see over the next six months is a rapid return from Asia. China is definitely coming back. We’ve got an office in China, we’re welcoming our China team back to Melbourne this week. Inquiries are definitely picking up from China and the feedback on the ground from our office is that they are moving quickly into a reopening phase. As aviation rebuilds, we going to start seeing those groups return.

“We’ve got six airlines that have now restarted services between Melbourne and China already. They are at 50% of pre-Covid capacity now and that should rebuild quite quickly.”

How much business did AIME generate?

“It’s probably a little too early to give exact numbers,” Swanson says, “but we know from last year the show delivered $120 million worth of business events. That that’s what our buyers told us. We will do some hotel evaluations as well. Anecdotally, walking around the floor today, we’ve had a lot of people say they have had a really good show, with high quality buyers and productive meetings.”

Swanson concedes that airfares, currently much more expensive than pre-pandemic, are “a challenge for all destinations”.

“Everyone’s experiencing the same, so we are not unique in that. The Victorian Government, Melbourne Airport, Visit Victoria and agencies such as ours at the Melbourne Convention Bureau, are all working together to try to rebuild those aviation links. We are doing our job, driving demand and filling seats and waiting for the airlines to add more capacity.”

Meanwhile, the era of video conferencing is striking challenges, as punters opt strongly for face-to-face meetings at events such as AIME. Zoom is reported this month to be cutting about 1300 jobs, which will hit nearly 15% of its workforce, the Guardian reports.

“We are seeing very strong demand for face-to-face,” Swanson confirms. “During the Covid chapter we’ve had AIME face-to-face with an online platform running alongside it as well. This year, it [the online platform] wasn’t even in the conversation! We just dropped it because no one wanted it. No one even asked: ‘Where is online? Can I do it online?’ People are not even interested.”

Summing up, Swanson concludes that “technology has always been part of our industry and it will continue to be there, but we are a people-based business first and foremost and it can’t really be replicated online.

“Conferences should always be open, with various tech platforms supporting them and supporting markets in various ways. It’s support – but it’s not the driver. Video conferencing is very different from meeting someone at AIME, where you can sit down, have a conversation, or have a coffee. Now that people are meeting again, everyone realises what they lost.”