Do you have any role models in the meetings and events industry? Do you think some have come further in their way of running their business to a higher professional level? Who has the knowledge you also want to have? You should have role models. Not only because it’s good to learn from the best, but also because other people’s examples can help you understand the opportunities that exist in your working life. Role models are an important source of motivation and building your self-confidence. When people who are similar to yourself do something good, you realise that you can do the same.

Surprisingly, few people can answer the question straight up: Who are your most important role models in the meetings and events industry?

Or can it be considered a bit childish to have role models? A role model is not the same as an idol. Idols are people we admire and glorify in a rather uncritical way, without necessarily learning anything from their example.

An example is a person or company from which you learn something; a person or company that you recognise yourself in and who does something that you could also do.

To be able to do something good in life, you must know that it is doable; otherwise, it becomes hard to feel motivated. But you also need to know that you can do just that.

It can also be about benchmarking. Benchmarking becomes comparison opportunities with the importance of evaluating their business quantitatively or qualitatively concerning those that they perceive behave best in their respective business areas and aims to align their goals with the most exciting and prominent designed solutions and examples in the areas they are focused on.

It is usually a process that can cost a lot of money by doing several investigations, both externally and internally within the company. Travel costs can also occur if you are to compare with other competitors in other countries or if you are a global company, but most often this cost is fine when you see the benefits of using the benchmarking model.

We see Australia as both a role model and the benchmarking destination number one, within the worldwide meetings and events industry. The distance may be part of the explanation why Australia, which is on the other side of the earth for us living in Europe and quite far away from the US and South America, needs to be better than the rest at getting the attention it needs for its development as individuals and as a society.

In this report, you can read about Carmel Foley and Deborah Edwards, who work at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) where they have developed Australia’s business events strategy. Also, read the interview with Geoff Donaghy at ICC Sydney, perhaps the world’s most successful meeting place in meetings and events today? All the articles you can read in this report talk about successful researchers, companies and events.

After writing about the global meetings industry for more than 30 years, I am not often impressed, or almost never during my global travels. Some destinations are good, few are very good, and Australia is at the forefront of the global meetings and events industry. This is when it comes to strategy, service, knowledge, facilities, hotels, restaurants, food, wine, personalities and not least important: the desire to continually improve in the meetings and events industry. And we do see a fantastic collaboration between different people, universites and companies. Lots of meetings and events destinations should look to Australia and try to be inspired and then take a step closer to the way the Australians are developing the global industry.