Karen Bolinger , CEO of the MCB , with AIME founder Sue Calwell at her induction to the AACB Hall of Fame .
The song remains the same
The Asia-Pacific Incentives & Meetings Expo is celebrating its 25 th anniversary this year , but the genesis for the show began in 1983 with the launch of the Melbourne Meeting Mart and the vision of the show ’ s founder Sue Calwell .
Self-interest is a great motivator , and if it wasn ’ t for the single minded ambition of Sue Calwell to establish a revenue stream for the Melbourne Convention Bureau while simultaneously putting Melbourne on the map for global events AIME would unlikely have existed .
Calwell was appointed executive director of the Melbourne Convention Bureau in 1979 and quickly realised that the events industry had yet to recognise itself as such , being rather a collection of disparate services that worked towards a common goal – to make meetings happen .
“ I was trying to form a membership for the Melbourne Convention and Visitors Bureau back then , when I took over as CEO ,” she says .
“ It was very early days but we were trying to build a base . As part of my marketing I decided we needed a planners guide , which I was then going to market . They needed to be able to see what Melbourne had to offer . I then thought we needed some sort of exhibition to invite potential buyers to meet the suppliers . That was the basis for the first Melbourne Meeting Mart . It was a one day expo and I reckon we might have had 30 suppliers , some from regional Victoria . Maybe 100 people came – we killed it !”
With a successful expo under her belt and a planners guide , Calwell ’ s next stop was government . She convinced them to invest a dollar for every two dollars she raised from
28 Convention & Incentive Marketing , Issue 1 , 2017 www . cimmagazine . com