I’m a Brit who has been living in Australia for 15 years (I’m affectionately called a Pozzie by the Australian locals, meaning part Pom and part Ozzie!). My role includes responsibilities for our Australian and UK operations. Which means regular trips to the UK office to facilitate the business and assess the local market. It’s apparent there are industry differences between the Australian and UK event app markets and also similarities worth noting.
The obvious similarities are, of course language and culture which means technology and user experience are also pretty much the same.
Demographically, Australia is far more urbanised than the UK with approximately 90% of the population living in five major cities. The UK has high urbanisation, although around 80 % of people live in smaller towns rather than a few big cities. However, there is a wider spread of people across the UK compared to Australian, where the population is more concentrated in those city locations.
The Australian 4G and 3G network was rolled out quicker than in the UK, because it was possible to focus on the big cities. In the UK it would have been a much harder process.
The architecture of many UK buildings would also have made rolling out Wi-Fi and 3G harder. I’m thinking of 500-year-old basement ballrooms, which are now used for conferences. In comparison, much of Australia’s architecture is far more modern.
These are obvious differences, but from a customer point of view it’s fair to say the UK has a bigger event app market with three times the number of people. This would mean that you would expect three times the amount of events and in turn three times the amount of event apps being sold. UK has Europe on its doorstep, which is another huge market. Australia has Asia relatively close.
In Australia we are seeing a move towards some customers wanting a one stop shop for event apps, whereas in the UK we see customers using various different suppliers.
This may be because the British events on average will have more attendees and in turn more budget, so getting the best of everything from different suppliers is affordable. In some cases in Australia, time and money is more of a consideration so buyers will choose an event app supplier that does one thing well and will perhaps settle for a service from a one-stop shop that isn’t so great.
