NEWCASTLE AND HUNTER POWERING AHEAD

The Newcastle and Hunter Region is becoming a centre of excellence with regard to the organisation and management of meetings and events.

One of Australia’s most highly regarded conference organisers, Jill Mason, is bringing her decades of experience at the highest level of the meetings industry to classes at the TAFE colleges of Newcastle and Ourimbah on the Central Coast.

Ms Mason is a former National President of Meetings & Events Australia (known then as MIAA), and was responsible for helping develop the curriculum which is used around Australia.

>> Conference & meeting venues Hunter Valley Newcastle, NSW


Some 80 students a year are undertaking the various diploma and certificate courses in event management each year, a significant addition to the skills requirement of the nation’s $17 billion a year event industry.

Like wine producing areas the world over, the Hunter Valley region makes the most of its natural assets and uses the cache that surrounds the wine industry to great advantage.

The Region is in easy striking distance of Sydney and has developed a wide array of venues which are ideal for smaller corporate meetings, with some venues able to host up to several hundred guests.

The past couple of years have seen several new resorts and golf courses come on line, adding to the list of options for the meeting planner. With lower overheads than Sydney hotels, the Hunter properties – and those of Newcastle – are significantly better value and can allow for the budget to go a lot further than it might using a busy city hotel. The benefit of bringing participants away from all the distractions when meeting close to the office is obvious.

Your meeting can be in a village as intimate as Vacy near the glorious Barrington Tops or as cosmopolitan as the re-energised Newcastle. You can even book your executives into a world-class spa resort where they can undertake a rejuvenation program that works on both body and mind. The management have wisely fenced the property, making it difficult to sneak off for a coffee at the adjoining resort! One of the special massages on offer here is the Watsu, which is provided in a heated swimming pool in near darkness. A number of the Hunter Valley resorts offer spa facilities.

There are countless ways of making the most of a Hunter Valley meeting. You can get wine, cheese and olive producers to conduct tastings and even enrol your delegates into a wine industry school.

The wine school commences daily and is an informal tutorial of wine education. Your guests get to walk through a vineyard of 30 year old Shiraz vines and find out about all matters viticultural. Then it’s off to the crusher and into the winery to see the air bag presses, the tanks, the fermenters, the filtration equipment and large vats. The tour then moves through into the oak cask maturation area and on into the wine tasting cellars. The wine tutorial and tasting continues with information on the history of wine, the difference between the grape varieties and how wines are judged in Australia.

For partner programs there’s the chance to attend cookery classes (also as a teambuilding exercise), go cheese tasting and play one of several top notch golf courses in the area. You can float over the vineyards at dawn in a hot-air balloon; trundle around them in a horse cart or even ride through them on horseback.

The people of the Hunter Valley really understand that today’s delegates have high expectations, are often extremely well travelled and expect the highest standard of service from a destination.