Making the World Triathlon Final Work for Central City Retailers

The ITU World Triathlon Series returns to Auckland over Labour weekend in October for its Grand Final. Whilst last years event was considered successful, we are highly aware of the challenges that it presented to a number of Central City businesses. The event itself is locked in, including its course, so we are committed to working with the event organisers, and Auckland Tourism Events and Economic Development (ATEED) to try and find ways to maximise benefits and minimise losses for central city retailers.

Planning around this is currently underway, and includes

- Getting advanced information about the central city as a shopping/dining/entertainment destination to race participants and their entourages

- Exploring way in which we can get race spectators and athlete entourages around central city sights and shopping destinations during the week that they are in auckland

- Establishing a facebook relationship with the event – BIG little City has done this and individual businesses can too. This will enable a social connection with visitors to the page.

Working closely with the event organisers, ATEED, and Auckland Transport to ensure that the event and traffic management messages do not act as a deterrent to visitation

We will continue to update you as these initiatives are followed through and new ones are developed. We are advocating hard on your behalf to try and ensure that the Central City hosts the ‘right events, in the right location’ . We want to see events in city held in locations that will complement the adjacent business activity, and are working with Council, along with the Waitemata Local Board to try and get traction on this.

If you have ideas or suggestions about how we can make the World Triathlon Series Grand Final work for city retail, please contact us.