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Speaker 1: After years of building delays and one raging fire, finally

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Speaker 1: we've got an opening date for the new International Convention

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Speaker 1: Center in Auckland. Eleventh February. Doors will open. Preue Deli

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Speaker 1: is general manager for the convention center, joins me this morning.

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Speaker 2: Morning, Preue, Good morning, Ryan, thanks for having me.

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Speaker 1: Great to have you. One hundred and twenty one events

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Speaker 1: already for twenty twenty six on the on the calendar.

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Speaker 1: What interested to know what proportion of those are local

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Speaker 1: versus international?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so we estimate that, you know, each year, about

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Speaker 2: thirty percent of the number of events that we're going

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Speaker 2: to do will be international. We're hoping that it'll be more,

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Speaker 2: but as you can imagine, we've still got lots of

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Speaker 2: events coming in and the team we're working on converting

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Speaker 2: those every single day. So for us at the moment

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Speaker 2: where we're looking toward tasting about thirty percent and that

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Speaker 2: will equate to about thirty three thousand new international visitors

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Speaker 2: that will visit we'll visit New Zealand and Auckland every

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Speaker 2: year and that will look to bring about ninety million

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Speaker 2: dollars of economic impact to the city and the country.

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Speaker 1: So that's what you're forecasting and is that what you're

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Speaker 1: seeing with the events that you've got booked so far.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I mean for twenty twenty six out of

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Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty one, we do have some great

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Speaker 2: international congresses already concerned. A good example of one of

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Speaker 2: those is the Coral Reef Symposium, which is coming in July.

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Speaker 2: That's seeing two thousand people come for a conference for

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Speaker 2: four days. That alone is around five million dollars of

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Speaker 2: economic impact. And that's just one of the ones that

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Speaker 2: we've got coming for next year, and a few more

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Speaker 2: to announce shortly, seeing too.

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Speaker 1: Brilliant, brilliant how many are coming here specifically because of

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Speaker 1: the venue, like they would you know, they wouldn't have

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Speaker 1: happened anyway, you know what I mean.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I mean that's all that international business Ryan.

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Speaker 2: You know, a lot of them wouldn't have been able

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Speaker 2: to come to New Zealand without this convention center of

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Speaker 2: scale and being able to you know, hold these conferences

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Speaker 2: as sort of fifteen hundred and two thousand people. So

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Speaker 2: at the moment, you know, we've got a handful of

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Speaker 2: those that are sitting around those numbers for the next years,

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Speaker 2: and quite a solid pipeline that we're working on to

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Speaker 2: convert because we've got inquiries all the way out into

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Speaker 2: twenty thirty two at the moment for these big congresses.

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Speaker 2: So the team are working really hard on making sure

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Speaker 2: that we can we can bring them to the country.

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Speaker 1: There are a lot of people out there listening who

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Speaker 1: need a job. Job market's being tough. How many jobs

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Speaker 1: are you looking to put on? And the next we.

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Speaker 2: Are yeah, good question. We are actually soon to be

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Speaker 2: going out with a recruitment drive for our casual workforce.

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Speaker 2: So these are our people on the ground that will

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Speaker 2: be welcoming our visitors into the building. It might be

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Speaker 2: showing them to their seat in the theater, it might

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Speaker 2: be serving them a cup of coffee or their morning tea.

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Speaker 2: We're going to kick off with about three hundred people

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Speaker 2: that we need to find for positions, and then once

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Speaker 2: we get up and firing, we estimate that could go

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Speaker 2: up to about five hundred people. So we are on

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Speaker 2: the hunts for great Kiwis to come and help us,

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Speaker 2: you know, showcase this building to the world.

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Speaker 1: Brilliant prude, nice to have you on the show. Proue Deally,

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Speaker 1: general manager for the International Convention Center.

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Speaker 2: For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live

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Speaker 2: to news talks it Be from five a m.

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