AIME owner, the Melbourne Convention Bureau, and the event manager, Talk2 Media & Events, were certainly delighted with this year’s event as AIME 2025 broke records for its size, numbers of hosted buyers, exhibitors and attendees.

The show floor was certainly buzzing as local and international buyers engaged with the exhibitors. Some more engaging than others with offerings of gin (from Darwin) ginger beer (from New Zealand) and tea from Hobbiton.

There were 170 hosted international buyers from New Zealand, Europe, UK, South-East Asia, North Asia, India, South America, USA, and Canada and more than 470 domestic buyers – with 75% hosted buyers attending AIME for the first time.

More than 200 new exhibitors attended AIME 2025, along with two new international pavilions, Singapore and Thailand, joining 30 countries and territories represented at the event.

The social events around AIME are where hosts, buyers and exhibitors check out venues and experiences and of course network.

The welcome brunch for hosted buyers was held at Port Melbourne Sailing Club which brought back memories of 2020 as this was the venue for the welcome function that year, the one where so many overseas buyers didn’t make it, and it turned out to be a last hurrah before the industry was shut down a few weeks later. This was also one of the welcome functions that worked really well due to it being partly outdoors which allowed networking all night.

Unfortunately, despite this year’s welcome being held in a fabulous venue with great food and hospitality, it was marred in the latter stages by a barrage of loud music. OK I might be getting old but I’m not a fan of having to converse at a shouting level.

AIME Welcome Function great for the kids

This year’s event was held at il Mercato Centrale Melbourne. The venue is essentially an Italian themed food court by day with over 20 artisans creating wonderful food and drinks, along with bars and fine dining. The venue works surprisingly well for this type of event.

The next part of our Sunday tour was a hard hat visit to the soon to open 1 Hotel across the Yarra from the MCEC. This venue will be a welcome addition to Melbourne’s event scene.

Incidentally, Goods Shed #5 was to be the venue for the much hyped and ill-fated C2 event in 2018.

Melbourne is getting a new event space – and it is worth a look

1 Hotels is a new brand for Australia, joining a dozen others around the world. The visionary behind the brand is Barry Sternlicht who was the founder of W Hotels and says of this brand, “I wanted to capture the beauty of nature in a hotel and in doing so, commit to safeguarding it as best I can, a responsibility that I believe we all share. It’s 1 world.”

Various organisations took the opportunity to launch products, services and reports during AIME 2025.

ABEA and AIPC launch ANZ Academy for world-leading convention centre education

The International Association of Convention Centres (AIPC) and Australian Business Events Association (ABEA) have officially announced their partnership to deliver tailor-made leadership training program for convention centres from June 2025.

Melbourne Convention Bureau launches report on the impact of business events

The Positive Impact of Business Events Report is an overview of the immense value that business events deliver.

Lyn Lewis-Smith and Gary Grimmer win inaugural business events advocacy award

Lyn Lewis-Smith, chief executive of Business Events Sydney, and Gary Grimmer, chair of GainingEdge, have been awarded the inaugural The Iceberg Excellence Awards for Advocacy of the Business & Professional Events Sector at the AIME Leaders Forum hosted by Australian Business Events Association (ABEA).