So my horse didn’t naturally win at the Melbourne Cup but for a moment there, I felt like I was nearly a winner at Australia’s horse racing event of the year.

The only difference was this race took place in a banquet room at The Fullerton Hotel, Singapore but the Melbourne and Convention Visitors Bureau (MCVB) had decked it out so that it looked like the real thing – well, ish.

The service staff were dressed like jockeys. There were fancy hats on the cocktail tables. Each table had a race card with the names of 15 horses – each name corresponding to each partner in this MCVB roadshow of two Asian markets, Singapore and Taiwan.

The idea, according to CEO Sandra Chipchase, was to enact the excitement of one of Australia’s most iconic sporting event. “On the first Tuesday of every November, every Australian is glued to his television set watching the race.”

Apparently, each year, more than A$26 million is wagered on this race. Here’s some more trivia about this race that’s held in Flemington – it was first run in 1861, the Cup was $1,420 in 1861 and $5.1 million in 2005, and the oldest horses to win the race were the eight-year-olds Toryboy (1865) and Catalogue in 1938.

Tips aside, Chipchase told the Café that despite overall inbound arrivals to Australia being down, business from Asia to her city is on the rise.

“It’s all good, darling,” she said over foie gras and red wine at the dinner. “We came on this trip, cautious. We thought budgets would be cut and group sizes would be smaller with the economy. But that’s not what we got. There have been no cut in budgets, group sizes are remaining the same and there are lots of RFPs around.”

The star performers for Melbourne are Singapore, India and China, she said.

She’s also keen for Melbourne to lead the way in “sustainable events” and, as such, the carbon footprint from this roadtrip to Singapore and Taiwan is being offset by the MCVB.

Meanwhile, Tourism Australia’s chief for the Asia region, Maggie White, told the dinner guests Melbourne, where she was born, and Singapore, where she lives, have a lot in common.

Singapore is hosting its first Youth Olympic Games in 2010, Melbourne hosted its first Olympics in 1956. Singapore will be hosting the Formula 1 in September. Melbourne is also home to Formula 1.

Asia has also been the star performing region for Australia during these challenging times in its tourism which is seeing more departures than arrivals. White said India was up 22% in the first six months of this year while Malaysia grew by 9% and Singapore by 2%. China’s growth is still in the double-digit although it has slowed down in the past two months,

“But we expect this to come up now that the Olympics is over. Japan is the only market in Asia that’s down, but they are down for everywhere around the world.”

So fancy a flutter at the Melbourne Cup this November? Get a taste of the excitement with this video …