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How the Chippendale Precinct redefined the business visitor welcome experience for the International Astronautical Congress 2025.
On 29 September 2025, something remarkable happened in Sydney. Five thousand international delegates didn't just attend a conference welcome event, they experienced a city. Not through speeches or PowerPoints, but through food, music, art and the creative energy of one of Sydney's most distinctive precincts.
This is the story of how the Chippendale Precinct, the Office of the 24-Hour Economy Commissioner, Investment NSW, BESydney and the International Astronautical Congress (IAC2025) collaborated to create a new model for welcoming business visitors to Sydney, one that gets them beyond the walls of the convention centre and into the heart of what makes the precincts in our city extraordinary.
IAC2025 Sydney Welcome Event in Chippendale 24-Hour Economy NSW
Traditional conference welcome events generally follow a familiar formula. But what if a welcome celebration could showcase not just the conference, but the city itself? What if delegates could taste, hear, and feel Sydney's creative character from the very first night? What if we could turn a precinct into an experience, and prove that business events can deliver cultural and economic benefits far beyond the convention floor.
The Chippendale Precinct delivered a large-scale public experience in partnership with the IAC2025, a global conference with 99 countries represented.
The IAC2025 Welcome Experience became a proving ground: could a precinct-led activation deliver both operational excellence and emotional resonance? The answer, as 5,000 delegates discovered, was yes.
Chippendale came alive with light, sound, and movement. This wasn't a traditional event space, it was an entire street take-over and living stage where every corner offered discovery.
“When you think about the scale of what we're doing here tonight — seven and a half thousand delegates across the IAC week, and about 5,000 here at Kensington Street for this incredible welcome reception and street party - it really says to me that we have an extraordinarily vibrant city here in Sydney that we can work with."
Keegan Buzza, General Manager, Space Policy, Australian Space Agency.
But numbers alone don't capture what happened that night“It's actually many of the delegates’ first time in Sydney. It's fantastic to be able to get them out into the Chippendale Precinct, into the outside world, into Spice Alley, and really experiencing the best that Sydney has to offer,”
Lisa Vitaris, Director of the IAC2025 Sydney.
Delegates roamed between restaurants and laneways, sampling dishes and meeting chefs, bartenders, and artists. NSW suppliers, Peter Drayton Wines, Good Folk, Young Henrys were at the heart of the offering. Gin Lane created bespoke Space-themed cocktails. Str'eats added playfulness with curated jelly shots. Every venue contributed its own character. Performers and musicians moved through the laneways, creating theatre and surprise.
IAC2025 in Chippendale Precinct, September 2025 Image credit: James P Brown
The partnership didn't end when the welcome celebration concluded. Throughout Congress week, the precinct offered special promotions to encourage delegates to return, and they did.
This extended engagement transformed a single-night event into a week-long relationship between international visitors and a Sydney precinct. Delegates who experienced Chippendale's energy on opening night became repeat visitors, bringing colleagues, exploring venues, and embedding the precinct into their Sydney story.
Delegate feedback was overwhelming. The experience didn't just meet expectations, it redefined them.
More significantly, the IAC2025 Welcome Celebration has inspired future Congress hosts in Turkey and Poland to deliver similar precinct-based experiences in their cities. What began as a Sydney innovation is now becoming an international model for how conferences can engage with place. Our global city shone. The Chippendale precinct shone. And a new benchmark was set for what's possible when government, industry, and local business collaborate to turn place into experience.
The District model shows how we can get business visitors beyond the conference centre walls and into place-based experiences that are operationally sound, economically beneficial, authentic and emotionally unforgettable.
You can connect with Chippendale Precinct and can see upcoming opportunities across NSW Districts here.
If you are an event/conference organiser and would like to explore potential precinct experiences, please connect with the Neon Marketplace team at the Office of the 24-Hour Economy Commissioner.
Photos by Yeah Rad
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