Prue Daly: NZICC General Manager on the Convention Centre set to open in February of 2026

SkyCity's pulling together the final touches on its colossal International Convention Centre ahead of its February 11th opening. 

A large fire in 2019, when the building was nearing completion, set the project back significantly.  

Now with just two months to go, SkyCity's locked in more than 100 conferences and events at the new venue.  

General Manager Prue Daly told Ryan Bridge an estimated 30% of their events each year will be international.  

She says they’ve got inquiries all the way out to 2032, and the team is working to make sure they can bring them to New Zealand.  

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
After years of building delays and one raging fire, finally
we've got an opening date for the new International Convention
Center in Auckland. Eleventh February. Doors will open. Preue Deli
is general manager for the convention center, joins me this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Morning, Preue, Good morning, Ryan, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Great to have you. One hundred and twenty one events
already for twenty twenty six on the on the calendar.
What interested to know what proportion of those are local
versus international?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, so we estimate that, you know, each year, about
thirty percent of the number of events that we're going
to do will be international. We're hoping that it'll be more,
but as you can imagine, we've still got lots of
events coming in and the team we're working on converting
those every single day. So for us at the moment
where we're looking toward tasting about thirty percent and that
will equate to about thirty three thousand new international visitors

(00:50):
that will visit we'll visit New Zealand and Auckland every
year and that will look to bring about ninety million
dollars of economic impact to the city and the country.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
So that's what you're forecasting and is that what you're
seeing with the events that you've got booked so far.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean for twenty twenty six out of
one hundred and twenty one, we do have some great
international congresses already concerned. A good example of one of
those is the Coral Reef Symposium, which is coming in July.
That's seeing two thousand people come for a conference for
four days. That alone is around five million dollars of
economic impact. And that's just one of the ones that

(01:27):
we've got coming for next year, and a few more
to announce shortly, seeing too.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Brilliant, brilliant how many are coming here specifically because of
the venue, like they would you know, they wouldn't have
happened anyway, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean that's all that international business Ryan.
You know, a lot of them wouldn't have been able
to come to New Zealand without this convention center of
scale and being able to you know, hold these conferences
as sort of fifteen hundred and two thousand people. So
at the moment, you know, we've got a handful of
those that are sitting around those numbers for the next years,
and quite a solid pipeline that we're working on to

(02:02):
convert because we've got inquiries all the way out into
twenty thirty two at the moment for these big congresses.
So the team are working really hard on making sure
that we can we can bring them to the country.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
There are a lot of people out there listening who
need a job. Job market's being tough. How many jobs
are you looking to put on? And the next we.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Are yeah, good question. We are actually soon to be
going out with a recruitment drive for our casual workforce.
So these are our people on the ground that will
be welcoming our visitors into the building. It might be
showing them to their seat in the theater, it might
be serving them a cup of coffee or their morning tea.
We're going to kick off with about three hundred people

(02:41):
that we need to find for positions, and then once
we get up and firing, we estimate that could go
up to about five hundred people. So we are on
the hunts for great Kiwis to come and help us,
you know, showcase this building to the world.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Brilliant prude, nice to have you on the show. Proue Deally,
general manager for the International Convention Center.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
to news talks it Be from five a m.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Week days, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio