Brisbane Economic Development Agency (BEDA) announced that its work delivered A$2.3 billion to the city’s economy in 2025-26, supporting 18,245 jobs and creating 744 new roles. International conferences and incentive travel accounted for A$103 million of that total. Major events – among them the British & Irish Lions tour, the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo and NRL Magic Round – delivered A$411 million. Investment attraction and business growth programmes contributed more than A$1.5 billion.

On those numbers, conventions look like a rounding error. They aren’t. The interesting part is not the size of the business events figure but the company it keeps.

One agency, four levers

BEDA is Brisbane’s official convention bureau. It is also the organisation charged with attracting global investment to the city, running its business support programmes and marketing the destination to leisure visitors. Most cities distribute those responsibilities across two or three separate bodies, each with its own board, budget and reporting line. Brisbane consolidates them.

For international association organisers, that is more than an org-chart curiosity. A bid team that also manages inward investment has standing relationships with the research institutes, anchor employers and government departments that any serious congress bid needs behind it. The local host committee is not assembled from scratch each time; it is drawn from a network the agency already works with daily.

BEDA chief executive Anthony Ryan said: “Brisbane’s momentum is extraordinary, and our role is to keep bringing the right people together to turn that momentum into jobs, growth and lasting economic value.”

Bidding on sector strength

The A$1.5 billion investment and business growth figure includes programmes such as the MedTech Global Accelerator and the Future Food Initiative, both designed to connect Brisbane companies with international capital and new markets.

Read through a convention bureau lens, those programmes are also a pipeline. Medical technology and food security are among the most active association sectors globally, and a city deliberately building industry depth in both is building the subject-matter case for future bids at the same time. The delegate boost follows the industry, not the other way round.

That logic is already formalised in Brisbane’s bidding infrastructure. The Lord Mayor’s Convention Trailblazer Grant funds local researchers and business figures to attend international conferences in their fields, on the understanding that they will then work with BEDA to identify and support future bids. Previous rounds have helped secure at least nine international conventions, worth an estimated A$10 million.

Team Brisbane, in practice

BEDA works alongside Brisbane City Council, Brisbane Airport, Tourism and Events Queensland and Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre under a partnership it calls Team Brisbane.

Destination partnerships of this kind are common enough in the sector, and often amount to little more than a shared stand at IMEX. BEDA chairman Paul Spiro argued the model does more than that.

“Brisbane works best when business, government and industry pull in the same direction,” Spiro said. “These record results show what Team Brisbane can achieve when we work as one, and the impact is far greater than any organisation could deliver alone.”

The measurable test is aviation and accommodation. Destination marketing and travel trade activity added more than A$304 million, and total visitor spending across the city reached a record A$17.1 billion. For an organiser, that translates into airlift and hotel inventory being actively grown rather than passively counted – the two constraints that most often decide whether a mid-sized international congress can realistically go to a second-tier Asia-Pacific city at all.

The 2032 runway

Every conversation about Brisbane eventually reaches the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2032. The city is working through a pipeline of infrastructure projects BEDA values at more than A$100 billion, much of it transport, accommodation and precinct development due well before the Games.

Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner tied the year’s results to that horizon.

“This is why we are Australia’s lifestyle capital and every result like this builds a stronger, more prosperous Brisbane as we look towards 2032 and beyond,” Cr Schrinner said.

For association organisers planning six to eight years out – which is to say, most of them – the practical question is what that construction cycle means for venue availability and delegate costs between now and 2032. Cities in Olympic build phases have historically seen hotel rates climb and city-centre space tighten as the Games approach. Brisbane’s counter-argument is that its convention infrastructure is already built and paid for: BCEC has been operating since 1995, sits in the South Bank precinct rather than a Games zone, and is not dependent on Olympic delivery for capacity.

What organisers should take from this

Ryan was careful to frame the result as a starting point rather than a finish line.

“We’re proud of what we’ve achieved this year, but our work doesn’t stop here. We’re focused on creating long-term value for Brisbane,” he said.

The A$2.3 billion headline will do its job locally. The number that matters internationally is the third consecutive year above A$1 billion – evidence of a system producing results repeatedly, rather than a city enjoying one unusually good calendar.

Brisbane will not out-spend Singapore or Sydney on inbound conference marketing, and it does not need to. What the 2025-26 figures suggest is a different proposition: a bureau embedded in the machinery that decides which industries the city grows, backed by a partnership structure able to move on airlift, hotel supply and host committees at the same time.

For organisers weighing an Asia-Pacific rotation, that is the claim worth interrogating at IBTM World and IMEX America this year – and the one to test against what BEDA actually delivers when the next round of bids is decided.

Article by Iain Stirling, originally published in Conference & Meetings World (CMW) and republished with permission.