EXPANSION THE BYWORD FOR ENERGY CITIES ALLIANCE

EXPANSION THE BYWORD FOR ENERGY CITIES ALLIANCE

DESERT RESORTS, GOLF COURSES AND CONVENTION CENTRES GROW PROPOSITION

The meetings industries of the four cities which make up the Energy Cities Alliance – Aberdeen, Abu Dhabi, Calgary and Perth in Australia – are witnessing huge expansion of their meetings industry infrastructure with a combined billion-dollar-plus development portfolio.

The Aberdeen Convention Bureau says its business tourism case has taken a major leap forward with work commencing on Donald Trump’s landmark development at the Menie estate on the Aberdeenshire coast. The £1 billion world-class golf resort features two courses, a five-star 450-room hotel, state-of-the-art conference centre, 36 golf villas and 95 holiday homes.

“This is just one of a raft of investments which are underway within Aberdeen City and Shire,” explained Jacky Selway, Manager, Aberdeen Convention Bureau. “It will be a huge boost to business tourism in the area and really give it a fantastic profile. It will provide the centrepiece of a golf and hotel boom which will see a range of new facilities and luxury and tourist-category hotels open in the next few years.”

Work on the resort follows hard-on-the-heels of the recent opening of Aberdeen’s Hammerson’s £250 million Union Square project, which, along with significant investment at the city’s Bon Accord centre, has transformed the area’s retail offering.

Meanwhile other developments in Aberdeen are continuing apace. At a cost of £57 million, the iconic building which will house the new University of Aberdeen library is due to open in 2011 providing an exceptional venue for receptions, exhibitions and events. Plans are also going ahead at Blairs in Aberdeenshire for a £115 million golf resort, with a hotel and conference centre and championship course designed by former open champion Paul Lawrie.

The accommodation inventory within Aberdeen city and shire has increased by 25% this year and includes the new, award-winning Malmaison Hotel and a 203-bedroom Jurys Inn. The Norwood Hall Hotel has opened a £3.5 million stand-alone conference centre in its magnificent grounds.

 Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is riding on a wave of interest spurred by the recent highly successful staging of the inaugural Etihad Airways Formula 1™ Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the incomparable Yas Marina Circuit. Seven hotels recently opened on Yas Island including the spectacular Yas Hotel seen by millions around the world as they watched the race with the hotel straddling the track.

A 90 minute drive out of Abu Dhabi city a new destination – the Qasr Al Sarab (Mirage Palace) desert retreat by Anantara has opened giving the incentive industry a truly unique destination. Set amidst the towering dunes of the Liwa Desert – at the gateway to the famed Empty Quarter (Rub Al Khali), the world’s largest uninterrupted sand mass – Qasr Al Sarab has been built with authentic architectural techniques of the area and resembles an ancient Arabian fort.

And the Arabian Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi has received a major business tourism boost with three new key events slated for next year. The World Health Care Congress Middle East, being billed as ‘The Davos of Health Care,’ is to be organised by the USA’s World Congress Inc., a leading global provider of healthcare congresses, the event, to be staged next December, is being held in collaboration with the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi and with the support of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA).  To run annually for three years from 2010 – 2012, the congress will target healthcare leaders and feature high level content covering research, policies and insurance with delegates being allowed to register for individual streams.

“We envisage the event attracting a high regional and international turnout of health care executives, providers, and government leaders to explore fresh ideas and unique insights,” said Gillian Taylor, Business Tourism Manager, ADTA. “The topics to be addressed will be actionable and strategic, designed to address escalating health care costs, challenges in quality, new models for finance and improvements in delivery.”

Meanwhile, March next year will see the staging of the first Abu Dhabi Media Summit in which 400 invited media representatives will gather in the capital of the United Arab Emirates for top-level dialogue. The summit will focus on emerging media in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The co-chairs of the summit reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the media worth and includes: the President and Chairman of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch; Tim Armstrong the CEO of AOL; Lee Seok Chae, Chairman of KT Corporatin; Kai-Fu Lee, Chairman & CEO of Innovation Works; Maurice Levy, Chairman of the PublicisGroupe; Didier Lombard, Chairman of Orange/France Telecom; Kishore Lulla, Chairman and CEO of Eros International; Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of CEO of Bharti Enterprises and Dr. Prannoy Roy, Executive Chairperson of NDTV.

“The Abu Dhabi Media Summit is set to become a tremendous meeting of the minds. I can’t think of a better place to be talking about the future of media,” said Rupert Murdoch. “Abu Dhabi sits at the nexus of East and West, of developing and developed, of our media present and its future.”

The invitation-only inaugural summit will be held at Abu Dhabi’s latest icon building – the Yas Hotel from March 9-12.

From December 6-10, 2010 Abu Dhabi will also host a major new international confex, World Green Tourism Congress (WGTC).

The event, the first-of-its-kind in the Arabian Gulf, is being organised by the UAE's Streamline Marketing Group (SMG) with ADTA, which manages, helps develop and promote the emirate's tourism industry, as headline sponsor.

The event - a conference with a supporting exhibition - will be a forum for key industry leaders and associations to discuss the environmental challenges facing the tourism industry, highlighting 'green' initiatives, technologies and solutions currently being integrated into mainstream industry practices.

Over 7,000 miles west of Abu Dhabi, in the Canadian city of Calgary, the Convention Centre Authority (CCCA) has taken its first steps in designing, building and operating expanded facilities. It has issued a Request for Proposal for prime consultancy services to assist in selecting functional programmers in developing convention and tradeshow facilities.

“Regardless of when construction might begin in the future, planning is essential if the authority is to remain competitive in the convention business,” said Chair Laurel Wood. “Other convention centre facilities across Canada and the United States are expanding, and we need to look to the future as well.”

Once selected, the prime consulting team is expects to submit a report on its activities to the CCCA Board and City Council by the year end.

Meanwhile, still in Calgary, the TELUS Convention Centre (CTCC) and the Calgary Hotel Association (CHA) has reached an agreement to market and promote business sales to the Canadian city from the meetings, convention and incentive travel sector. The new department, to be known as Calgary Destination Sales & Marketing, will be housed at the CTCC and is aimed at fostering economic vitality within the city by promoting it, and the surrounding area, as a prime business travel destination. Funding is being provided by the Calgary Hotel Association, Destination Marketing Fund.

Much further south, the Perth Convention Bureau (PCB) has become the first bureau in Australia to be recognised as a Green Globe Benchmarked Administration Office.  Achieving bronze status, the PCB, along with its industry partners, is committed to reducing the environmental impact of the business events industry in Western Australia.

Currently 57 Australian businesses have achieved Green Globe accreditation, many of them being PCB members.

The Green Globe Company Standard is designed for organisations within the travel and tourism industry worldwide and sets out criteria to attain certification. It provides an environmental management framework for organisations to achieve sustainability.

PCB has been offsetting its carbon footprint since late last year and the Green Globe accreditation is another step forward in its sustainability.

“As a long haul destination from the UK and Europe in particular, we are conscious of the need to be actively advocating an environmentally sustainable future,” said PCB’s Managing Director, Christine McLean.

“We recognise that the world’s leading companies and associations are looking to destinations that employ best practice when it comes to environmental policy and corporate social responsibility.”

The Bureau has recently secured two major global conferences for 2011.  These are the 7th International Symposium on Digital Earth which is expected to attract 1,100 delegates and the International Desalination Association Conference on Desalination and Water Re-use with its anticipated 900 delegates.  It has also sealed two national conferences for 2011 - the Australia Pacific Autism Conference (900 delegates) and the 14th National Historical Machinery Association Annual General Meeting (1,450 delegates).