Doing Unusual Things in Unusual Places: How Innovative Venue Selection is Redefining Business Events
When event professionals talk about innovation, the conversation often centres on technology, AI, or immersive experiences. Yet one of the most powerful ways to create memorable events may be far simpler: choose a venue that no one expects.
As Australia’s event industry prepares for increasing demand leading into Brisbane 2032, venue capacity and delegate expectations are changing. Traditional conference centres remain essential, but event organisers are increasingly asking a different question:
What if the venue itself became part of the experience?
The answer is seeing more business events move beyond four walls and into precincts, laneways, cultural spaces, breweries, waterfronts and entertainment districts. Rather than simply hiring a venue, organisers are creating experiences that activate entire destinations.
FWD>FEST 26 on the Sunshine Coast provides an excellent example of this approach.
Case Study: Turning a Waterfront Precinct into a Business Festival
FWD>FEST is a national entrepreneurship and innovation festival founded on the Sunshine Coast. Bringing together entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, government representatives, industry leaders and business owners, the 2026 festival featured 57 speakers across two-and-a-half days.
Rather than hosting the event within a traditional conference venue, event management company White House International took a bold approach.
Instead of one venue, they transformed the entire Mooloolaba Wharf precinct into what could best be described as a “distributed conference centre.”
Individual venues within the precinct, including The Wharf Events Centre, Savvy Squire, Salty Spaces co-working hub and public spaces throughout the wharf, were connected through a single event identity, allowing delegates to move between keynote sessions, breakout discussions, networking opportunities and hospitality experiences.
As White House International Director Min Swan explains:
“We basically amassed a business festival in the middle of a small business collective.”
The result was an event that felt less like attending a conference and more like stepping into a vibrant business community.
More Than a Venue: A Destination Experience
Venue selection should never simply be about room capacity. Every venue communicates something about an event before the first speaker even steps on stage.
For previous editions, FWD>FEST had been successfully delivered in traditional education and conference venues. For 2026, organisers deliberately chose an environment that aligned with the festival’s entrepreneurial spirit.
The waterfront location encouraged delegates to move between spaces, interact with local businesses and network in a relaxed atmosphere rather than remaining inside a single auditorium all day.
As Min explains, venue selection should always reinforce the intended outcomes of an event.
While day one, focused on business innovation and connection, was immersed within small businesses at The Wharf Mooloolaba, day two focused on elevated thought leadership. The venue chosen was Altitude Nine on the rooftop in Maroochydore’s City Centre.
Overlooking the entire region, this venue encourages delegates to broaden their view and elevate their mindset to new levels. The venue was therefore doing more than providing a room. It was helping communicate the theme and purpose of the event.
And this is a trend being increasingly recognised internationally.
The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) has highlighted a changing approach to business-events infrastructure, with venues and destinations increasingly embracing factors such as:
Public-private partnerships to share risk and grow reach
Curated, year-round programming to build ongoing engagement
Digital infrastructure to support hybrid access and global inclusion
Experience-driven design that turns physical space into storytelling
One particularly compelling statistic reinforces the importance of this shift: 82% of B2B attendees say destination character influences their decision to attend an event.
If destination character influences the decision to attend, then venue selection becomes much more than an operational decision. It becomes part of the event’s marketing, positioning and experience design.
For association leaders and event organisers, this calls for a rethink of the traditional venue-selection process. It is no longer enough to ask: “Does this space fit my event?”
The deeper questions become:
Does this venue help tell our story?
Does it align with the values and identity of our community?
Can it contribute to local engagement and destination branding?
Is it advancing sustainability in ways that resonate with the next generation of delegates?
These questions open up an entirely different way of thinking about event infrastructure.
The Global Shift: When the Destination Becomes the Venue
FWD>FEST is not an isolated example. Around the world, some of the most interesting business events are increasingly blurring the boundaries between venue, precinct and destination.
Perhaps the world’s best-known example is SXSW in Austin, Texas.
What began as a music festival has evolved into a global conference and festival that effectively takes over downtown Austin. Rather than confining delegates to a single convention centre, programming is distributed across theatres, hotels, clubs, restaurants and temporary spaces throughout the city.
In 2026, rather than allowing the redevelopment of its convention centre to constrain the event, SXSW embraced a more distributed “creative village” model, with Clubhouses and programming spread across downtown.
The result reinforces a powerful idea:
Sometimes the city itself can become the conference centre.
The concept doesn’t necessarily require a zoo, brewery or abandoned warehouse. Melbourne demonstrates another possibility: deliberately connecting an accommodation provider, major sporting venue and conference facility into a single delegate experience.
The combination of CENTREPIECE, the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Pullman Melbourne on the Park creates a connected business-events precinct where delegates can move between accommodation, meetings, sporting experiences and networking rather than experiencing each facility as an isolated venue.
Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay demonstrates another dimension of the concept: using a destination’s identity and environmental story as part of the event experience.
The attraction has multiple spaces, including Flower Field Hall, Silver Leaf and The Meadow, allowing events ranging from intimate business gatherings to very large-scale functions. It combines event infrastructure with gardens, Supertrees, waterfront landscapes and the broader Marina Bay experience.
Importantly, this isn’t simply about holding a cocktail party somewhere attractive.
Gardens by the Bay has become part of Singapore’s MICE proposition.
The venue becomes a storytelling device.
Rotterdam provides another compelling example. The city has repurposed elements of its industrial heritage as event infrastructure, with former shipyards, factories and industrial buildings now hosting conferences, networking events and corporate functions.
The message is particularly relevant for regional destinations:
For regions that lack large purpose-built venues, the answer may lie in collaboration rather than construction.
Creating a “Virtual Conference Centre”
The concept presents an interesting solution for destinations facing shortages of purpose-built conference facilities.
Rather than constructing new venues, event organisers can collaborate with multiple existing businesses to effectively create a temporary conference precinct.
For FWD>FEST, this required coordinating three independent venue operators, precinct management and numerous hospitality businesses.
Registration was positioned within the public heart of the precinct, while delegates flowed between multiple locations throughout the day.
From an operational perspective, this meant working with multiple venue managers rather than one, aligning separate catering operations, coordinating logistics across different buildings and ensuring consistent delegate experiences throughout.
While significantly more complex than using a single venue, the outcome created an event experience impossible to replicate within a conventional conference centre.
This is where the international examples become particularly relevant to regional Australia.
The innovation isn’t necessarily about finding an unusual building.
It is about connecting existing places in unusual ways.
The Ripple Effect for Local Businesses
Perhaps the most significant outcome was not for delegates, it was for businesses that had never considered themselves part of the events industry.
Coffee shops, restaurants, hospitality operators and retailers suddenly became active participants in a national business event.
Delegates purchased coffee between sessions. Networking continued over casual lunches.
Local food operators experienced increased visitation during what is traditionally a quieter mid-week tourism period. Businesses like Kenilworth Coastal Bakery that may never have considered conferences as part of their customer base suddenly experienced first-hand the economic value that business events can deliver.
Rather than conference delegates remaining inside one venue all day, spending was distributed across the precinct.
This demonstrates an important shift in thinking.
Business events are no longer simply customers of venues; they can become economic activators for entire destinations.
This is one of the reasons the international trend towards precinct-based and destination-led events is so significant. The event becomes a mechanism for connecting delegates with the places, people and businesses that make a destination distinctive.
Innovation Requires Collaboration
Of course, doing unusual things in unusual places also introduces new challenges.
FWD>FEST required close collaboration between precinct management, multiple venue operators, accessibility advisers, suppliers, government stakeholders and local businesses.
Trust became the foundation for making the concept work.
According to Min, every organisation involved needed confidence that the event would enhance rather than disrupt normal business operations. That trust had been built over many years of working relationships.
Innovation often depends less on bold ideas than on strong partnerships.
This is also where the ICCA emphasis on public-private partnerships becomes particularly relevant. The future of destination-based events may depend increasingly on venues, businesses, destination organisations and governments sharing both the opportunities and risks associated with creating new event experiences.
Accessibility Still Matters
Using unconventional venues does not remove the responsibility to deliver inclusive events.
Some spaces within the wharf precinct presented physical accessibility limitations that could not be immediately resolved.
But rather than ignoring these constraints, the organisers worked closely with accessibility specialists Cerge to develop detailed “Know Before You Go” information that clearly explained venue access, facilities and potential barriers before delegates arrived.
This proactive communication allowed attendees to make informed decisions while demonstrating genuine commitment to accessibility, even where perfect solutions were not possible.
The lesson is clear: Innovation should never come at the expense of inclusion.
The same principle applies to digital accessibility. As hybrid participation becomes increasingly normal, unconventional venues also need to consider digital infrastructure and connectivity if they are to provide genuinely inclusive experiences for those unable to attend physically.
Sustainability Beyond the Policy
The same practical mindset extended to sustainability.
Rather than treating sustainability as a compliance exercise, organisers considered supply chains, waste reduction, venue practices and procurement decisions during the planning process.
Working across multiple venues inevitably adds complexity, but early planning enabled sustainability considerations to become integrated into operational decision-making rather than an afterthought.
This is important as destinations compete for a new generation of delegates who increasingly expect events to demonstrate genuine environmental and social responsibility.
As with accessibility, perfection may not always be achievable but continuous improvement certainly is.
A Model for Regional Destinations
FWD>FEST raises an intriguing question for regional destinations across Australia.
If a waterfront dining precinct can become a conference venue, what else is possible?
Could a brewery district host an innovation summit?
Could a cultural precinct become a leadership conference?
Could a series of boutique venues across a town function collectively as a convention centre?
Could sporting facilities, restaurants, galleries and public spaces be connected into a temporary business-events precinct?
For regions that lack large purpose-built venues, the answer may lie in collaboration rather than construction.
By connecting existing businesses through creative event design, destinations can expand their business-events capacity while distributing economic benefits more broadly across local communities.
This also changes the role of destination organisations.
Instead of simply promoting individual venues, there is an opportunity to curate networks of experiences that demonstrate how a destination can collectively deliver an event.
The result could be more flexible capacity, stronger local business participation and a more distinctive proposition for event organisers.
Looking Ahead
As the Sunshine Coast prepares for growing demand associated with major national and international events in the lead-up to Brisbane 2032, examples like FWD>FEST demonstrate that innovation is not always about building something new.
Sometimes it is about seeing existing places differently.
It is also about viewing events differently and understanding how local businesses can grasp opportunities beyond the core event activity.
Doing unusual things in unusual places creates memorable delegate experiences, strengthens local economies, encourages collaboration and helps destinations unlock hidden event capacity.
The international examples demonstrate that this isn’t simply a passing trend. From Austin to Melbourne, Singapore to Rotterdam, destinations are increasingly recognising that the boundaries between venue, precinct and destination are becoming blurred.
For event organisers, that creates new possibilities.
For local businesses, it creates new markets.
For destinations, it creates new capacity.
And for delegates, it creates something increasingly valuable: an event experience that could not have happened anywhere else.
The Mooloolaba Wharf experiment may have started as a pilot, but it offers a compelling blueprint for the future of regional business events.
Min assures us this is just the very beginning of the possibilities for local businesses to get involved in FWD>FEST, already announcing a return to The Wharf for May 2027.
After all, the best venue isn’t always the biggest conference centre.
Sometimes, it’s an entire precinct waiting to be transformed.
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