Tākina turns a profit with its first exhibition
Thursday, 26 October 2023
Wellington has successfully added another tourist attraction to its repertoire with more than 90,000 people attending the new central city convention centre’s first exhibition.
The council was hoping giant Lego dinosaurs based on one of the world’s most popular movie franchises would not disappoint as Tākina’s first ticketed exhibition turned a profit.
Wellington City Council economic wellbeing manager Anna Calver said Lego show Jurassic World by Brickman more than covered its costs and came close to hitting the 100,000 visitor target.
“We’re very pleased with it as a first exhibition. We were hoping to get over the 100,000 mark, but in retrospect I think we were being very ambitious for something that was a totally new product.”
Calver said the goal of Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre shows was to attract more people to the facility and give the city another major attraction during key periods of the year.
“We didn’t just want to use it as a convention centre. We wanted to activate the city year-round.
“By creating an exhibition, you’ve got content that can extend for months at a time so you can ideally drive more than a hundred thousand people to each exhibition twice a year.”
Lego Jurassic World was on show from June 3 through to October 16, and the new MARVEL: Earth’s Mightiest Exhibition is set to open in mid-December.
A third of the first exhibition’s 92,000 visitors were from out of the region.
“That’s a really healthy number of people coming to Wellington who wouldn’t have otherwise come,” Calver said.
“The good news about this first one is that it will be profitable, and any profit we reinvest into the next exhibition.”
Tākina will host two shows a year to cover both the winter and summer periods.
“Particularly in January, Wellington doesn’t compete as much with what you might consider other classic summer tourism destinations, so having something on and a reason to come to Wellington is really important.”
Calver said they already had the next three exhibitions lined up.
They chose Brickman’s Lego Jurassic World to be the first one because it brought together several elements that people related well to.
“In this we had a triple hit. We had dinosaurs, we had Lego and we had a much-loved movie franchise, and we saw that as a winning combination to establish Tākina as an exhibition centre.“
Ryan ‘Brickman’ McNaught brought his Wonders of the World exhibition to Te Papa in 2018 which was very successful at the time.
There are not many franchises more popular than Marvel and the new exhibition opening December 14 was touted as a “global exclusive” featuring new content for the first time. It will include a mix of interactives, photo opportunies, immersive installations and artefacts from Marvel’s comics and films.