FACTS (Festival of Aviation Corporate Travel Summits) 2025 at the ICC Sydney had more than 1500 buyers and 107 exhibitors at its inaugural outing in November.
Co-founder Derek Sadubin explains it grew out of a one-day corporate travel show last November which had 480 buyers and 33 exhibitors.
“We polled a lot of the buyers who came along at the end of the event and they were very clear in their feedback that they wanted a lot more content on business events, travel payments and airlines,” he said.
“There’s so much intersecting common interests and topics across the four sectors of corporate travel, business events, travel payments and aviation, that we decided to bring them all together in this one show.
“We structured the agenda to include plenary sessions to cover all four areas and also created streams for each sector. And the industry has really come along to support it.”
Indeed it has, with 1690 registered delegates and 107 exhibitors participating in the two-day event.
Co-created with Peter Harbison, Mr Sadubin said they had already locked in the same dates at the ICC Sydney in 2026, including some more space to allow buyers and sellers to conduct one-on-one meetings, and for the organisers to deliver even more content across the four streams.
“We could probably fit about 2500 people max [but] we’re very keen to ensure that we have a good buyer to supplier ratio. We want to have at least 30 per cent buyers and make sure the suppliers who are sponsoring and supporting are getting good value for money.”
The company is adamant that the content of the event remains a major focus. Mr Sadubin said they were very much focused on listening to the buyers on their thoughts on what content they would like.
“We’ve had a lot of one-to-one meetings with the buyers to really understand what challenges they face and how we can provide good education to make sure the content is relevant and helpful to them.
“We also have an ironclad policy where we don’t sell any speaking spots. Everyone who gets up on the stage has been invited [by us] to be there just purely because we think they have good content to share.”
Two full days of conference sessions included talks on sustainability, the future of airlines, procurement, AI, trends, wellness and performance and what’s next for business events and incentives. The session included moderator Jakki Govan of Clockwise Consulting, with panel participants including DMS Destination Marketing Services MD, Marissa Fernandez, Events Beyond MD, Michelle Sargent, BCD Meetings & Events APVP, Fernando Lonergan, and Tribe MD, Leon Burman.
The success of FACTS 2025 will see the rollout of smaller networking events around the country, all leading into the major exhibition at the end of the year.
FACTS 2026 will be held at the ICC Sydney from November 25 to 26. Learn more at www.factsevent.com.