Official Welcome

Michael Matthews Chief Executive Officer Canberra Convention Bureau

Canberra is a world city, your capital, and an exciting place to do business. Cutting-edge researchers, Nobel Prize winners, federal politicians, innovative thinkers, artists, media figures and business leaders all call our great city home. It’s this mix of interesting people that makes Canberra a city of knowledge, culture and influence – a city that delegates feel and remember. This 2022 Meeting Planners Guide focuses beyond recovery with confidence that our planned and congestion-free city is the place where domestic planners will bring their business events, offering a controlled return to business activity. Canberra is now more connected than ever through increased air routes around Australia. Our convenient proximity to major population centres makes us the meeting destination of choice. We’re a dynamic city, abundant with prestigious establishments such as the National Museum of Australia, the National Gallery of Australia, and Australian Parliament House. Our national story is held within their walls, making them ideal places to host business events. THINK Canberra and the Research and Learning Institutes Group (RALIG), established by Canberra Convention Bureau, connect your events with these institutions, and the thought leaders who work there. Canberra continues to forge its reputation as Australia’s powerhouse of information and justify its title as the ‘Knowledge Capital’. The city is home to five of Australia’s topranking universities and a range of research centres. You’ll quickly discover that the city is ever evolving. Popular precincts, such as NewActon, Civic, Braddon and Kingston Foreshore buzz with activity. An advantage of holding your event in a well-designed city the size of Canberra is the ease of movement and connectivity. People within Canberra’s business events community take pride in working collaboratively to deliver on your business events outcomes, where planners and delegates can simply achieve more. With the help of the Canberra Convention Bureau team, you can access all of Canberra’s unique offerings to design an event program that will inform, entertain, inspire and impress. Our capital has already returned to the positivity that stems from being a well-managed confident world city, and we look forward to sharing it with you in person.