David Courtney, Crown CEO and Minister Time Holding launching the new convention centre.

Crown has officially launched its brand-new purpose-built conference centre, and with connections to existing Crown properties, sees the site become an integrated conference and entertainment complex.

Adjacent to the Crown Entertainment Complex in Southbank, the brand new convention centre has connections to Crown Towers, Crown Promenade and when opened will also link with the new Crown Metropol.

“We are now able to accommodate major local and international conferences with a conference hall with a capacity of 800 delegates, 16 meetings rooms and supporting facilities all in a brand-new state of the art facility,” said David Courtney, Crown CEO.

“Today 30 conferences and 100 meetings have been booked in.”

Crown Convention Centre Naked Conferencing.

Breakout room.

Already the site has successfully hosted several meetings during its soft open period, and by the end of this year, will have hosted over 50,000 local and international delegates.

Purpose-built for conferencing, the centrepiece of the new Crown Conference Centre is the pillar-less Crown Conference Hall which is capable of seating 840 delegates theatre-style.

Another unique feature of the conference centre is that every breakout room incorporates some form of natural lighting.

Also attending the launch on Wednesday was Tim Holding, Victorian Tourism and Major Events Minister, who commended Crown for its investment in the site as well as Melbourne as a conference and events city.

“This is such important business for our tourism industry, important because the guests who will come from interstate and overseas will fill our hotels, they’ll eat in our restaurants and they’ll spend money in our retail precinct. 

Crown Convention Centre Naked Conferencing.

“Many of them will also visit our fantastic regional locations while they’re here,” he continues. “They will spend five to six times more than a leisure tourist.”

With the new launch, the conference centre also unveiled its new “naked conferencing” concept, which sees tables set without tablecloths to cover them.  In this way, meetings and conferences leave smaller environmental footprints without the need of unnecessary washing of drape-cloths.

Below is the video of the press conference: