Verdict Peter Kinnane, Offsite Connections

Peter Kinnane, chief executive of Offsite Connections the special events company used for the Pfizer China group, brought the skills developed over many years as a Qantas representative in Asia to this project. "As Australians we sometimes appear fairly aggressive in our business deals to Asian customers and we as a company work hard to ensure our communications with our clients are of the highest order. We need to ask plenty of questions to ensure that both sides understand the requirements of the particular event." He said costings needed to be accurate as there was no room for changes and any additional services asked for had to be agreed and signed before the services were provided. "Rarely do we have just one person in charge - responsibility is shared around and for the China Pfizer group there were 40 people from the company looking after the event in Sydney." Kinnane said China had huge potential for developing incentive travel programmes in the years to come. "We are seeing pharmaceutical companies and direct-selling organisations like Amway growing rapidly in China and we anticipate groups to originate from cities other than Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou as more companies adopt Western style sales and marketing techniques with travel as part of the reward mix." He believes the minimal time-zone changes between Australia and China worked well for companies and, provided air capacity was there, the traffic could only build between the countries. "The Chinese airlines are being proactive in promoting the destination and this, with the efforts of the Australian Tourist Commission, is contributing to the image of Australia as a desirable destination for business tourism."