Gold Coast hosts Amway incentive

Challenges
This was the first incentive of its kind to be held on the Gold Coast, giving the city a chance to display its infrastructure and technical and support service capabilities over an extended period.
There was a two-year period from the first meeting with Amway to the guests’ arrival.
There were six waves of guests. Each wave had a maximum capacity of 1,200 guests, arriving
on the Gold Coast over a period of three weeks in March.
After the first few waves, changes were made to the delivery of the events and to develop the
experience for delegates in order to meet the organisers’ and Amway’s requirements.
As the venue for the gala dinners, Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre (GCCEC) anticipated there could be difficulty with the language and so embarked on a recruitment campaign six months before the event to attract Mandarin and Cantonesespeaking
team members.
It placed the new staff members throughout all its service areas, including facility cleaning,
security and operations.
GCCEC also conducted cultural awareness courses for every team member, including
management staff.
The menu for the event was carefully created to cater for the diverse dietary requirements of
the guests. Menus were designed for VIP guests, with special attention to the vegetarian and
halal guests. GCCEC employed a chef from a local Halal Malaysian restaurant to assist in ensuring that everything was planned and implemented to perfection.
Selecting cuisine for the carefully constructed menu involved over four months of preparation and 400 menu items that were presented to Amway before final decisions were made.
The greatest challenge during the event was ensuring the purchase of 6,000 lobsters – all
being the same size and weight.
GCCEC sourced 2,800 from Western Australia, 1,400 from Papua New Guinea and
1,800 from the Torres Straight.

Execution
The delegates travelled from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau to attend the event.
While GCCEC starred as the venue for gala dinners, a range of Gold Coast venues were used
during the three-week period.
The Gold Coast’s theme parks, restaurants and shopping precincts were also popular
with delegates.
The gala dinners were certainly a highlight of the event with Peter Jones Special Events
appointed to create the wow factor. Having never worked with an Asian incentive of this
magnitude before and with only three months to put it together, PJSE appointed two staff to work solely on the event.
The spectacular visuals involved roving performers, high-end production and especially made components, including glass-top tables and a huge stage with in-built ramps for the roller-blading and rollerskating acts.
Amway Greater China brought their own MCs and all announcements were made in
Mandarin. The dinner even included an ABBA cover band, with every detail being approved
by the organiser.
The fastest four-course meal served was on the evening of the first gala dinner where entrée,
soup, main course and dessert were all on the table within 58 minutes for the 1,187 guests.

Verdict
The partnership between Reliance, Amway, GCCEC team members and Peter Jones Special
Events worked especially well throughout the entire event.
Gold Coast Tourism CEO Pavan Bhatia says: “This has been a watershed year for business
tourism on the Gold Coast.
“We have been voted in the top three Asia Pacific business tourism resort destinations.
“We are showing growth in the business tourism sector of around 20 per cent and we have
delivered the city’s biggest ever conference event.”