Does your conference have all the right koala-fications? Make your strategy day r-elephant…and your family day turtlely awesome!

Are you constantly under pressure to find a good conference or business dinner venue? Are you charged with the responsibility of enhancing your work’s family day with creativity and themes?

Our Melbourne Zoo Events Team often speaks with Event Executives and PAs who call with tight deadlines to turnaround an entire conference or event. And the added pressure to make their guests’ day engaging and inspiring! We love to help and here are our four top tips on ensuring our meetings and events clients create the perfect corporate event for their guests, with minimal panda-monium!

1) Understanding your business objective

Understanding our client’s objective is our first priority.

What are you trying to achieve? From initial enquiry to the business event, our Melbourne Zoo Events Team members oversee all aspects of the event and we see our role as very much one of counsel and support to clients. We love helping you achieve your goals.

Our client’s objective can be as simple needing to create a relaxed atmosphere for guests so choosing our close-to-CBD event space ticks the box. More often, however, Event Executives are searching for a venue that adds value to their agenda and is an exciting draw to increase delegate attendance and engagement.

Some delegate groups are people who are usually stuck in offices all day. To offer them the opportunity to come to Melbourne Zoo and enjoy the beautiful heritage-listed gardens and animal experiences is very unique. We can also provide catering around your business session schedules, as well as ensuring the event space you choose suits your audience.

The most popular space at Melbourne Zoo Events is the Rainforest Room, which looks out onto the lush greenery of the Tamarin monkey habitat, as well as the award-winning Japanese Garden and lake with birdlife. It is perfect for a cocktail-style event or one-day conference venue, catering for up to 70 guests.

Our Bong Su event space (named after our Asian Elephant bull called Bong Su, the largest animal in Australia!) caters for 130 guests and is next to our majestic elephant herd enclosure and magical Butterfly House if you need some natural inspiration or a conference break!

For larger AGMs and team strategy days, the Leopard Lodge is ideal, boasting enough space for up to 500 guests. This flexible venue is literally within a ‘lion’s roar’ of the big cats’ habitat (you can hear the lions roaring throughout the day and at twilight!) – a suitably dramatic backdrop for a work event.

Many of the conferences we see are focused on leadership, team building, educating, and engaging and audience in a discussion.

Our Zoo event spaces lend themselves to some creative agendas! Past examples include:  “Leadership: Leading the pride”; “Making your business strategy a roaring success”; ‘Team building: Gorilla Mission Team Building”; “Team Structures: Who’s who in the Zoo”.

2) Helping create a food offerings that suits your budget and agenda

The Melbourne Zoo Events Team has a great relationship with our Executive Chef and, together, we create a menu that meets your budget.

For some of the professional services firms, where conferences are common and have the potential to become a bore, we have injected life into them with fresh healthy-choice food options for morning and afternoon tea breakouts, or even a relaxing and bonding post conference drinks as way to finish the day!

We’ve done espresso coffee carts and are about to embark on a collaboration with T2 Teas that will allow us to offer some deluxe tea tastings and on-trend tea offerings – like the highly charged and popular Macha and much-loved Turkish Delight Tea – to our guests. Attendees love to have something to take away – something to tell their friends about – a new experience. To be able to talk about a new or latest food or drink trend is always a great conversation starter and a unique way to make your conference resonate with guests.

A percentage of all of our revenue goes to our client, Zoos Victoria, to support its mission statement and vital work in fighting extinction.

3) Creating a vibe that your guests will love!

Some of our conferences, business dinners and family days have included special entertainment like lofty giraffe stilt-walkers and elephant puppeteers to kick off celebrations and amuse guests. Other entertainment ideas include ‘wild animal’, ‘jungle’ and safari’ themes where entertainers can dress up (think Tarzan!), or you can book tribal dancers as an ‘act’ to set the scene for great event. These creative performances are becoming more popular as clients really want a memorable experience for their guests.

Family days are popular at our event spaces because we can cater for casual family-like BBQs on the lawns to more lavish garden parties, and our beautiful open spaces and interesting animal life means we can host between 50 to 3,000 guests!! (Yes, excuse the pun but collectively speaking, that’s a big crash of rhinos…a bloat of hippos…a cackle of hyenas!!)

We operate at two sites – Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Open Range Zoo – and both are absolutely perfect for family days. And we always receive rave reviews from guests attending these events! Werribee Open Range Zoo has the added attraction of a safari bus tour, so guests can enjoy a great 40 minute ride around the property soaking in all of the open range wildlife.

4) And finally, contact us and we will help you create a memorable event!

Call our friendly Melbourne Zoo Events Team on (03) 9285 9440 or visit us at www.MelbourneAndWerribeeZooEvents.com.au