Currently only 5% of Australian retirees over 65 choose to live in a retirement village. With all the Baby Boomer generation about to start retiring en masse, the over 65's is set to become the fastest growing segment of Australia's population over the next 20 years. Ensuring there are appropriate and appealing accommodation options for this new market has become a critical issue for tomorrow's Retirement Living developers and operators.

ThomsonAdsett along with a group of industry specialists recently hosted a series of workshops for the Retirement Villages Association's members to examine the types of developments that would be attractive to this new market segment.

The 'Untapped' workshop series, which included representatives from BurnsBridgeSweett, Premier Consulting, Knight Frank, SAE Creative, Independent Managing Group and ThomsonAdsett presented a new integrated and market-driven approach to delivering retirement living products.

Chris Straw, ThomsonAdsett's Director of Retirement Living Services, said the seminar series provided a forum for retirement living developers to hear from an experienced team of industry professionals and discuss strategies to reach the vast 'untapped' seniors market.

"This interactive workshop brought together architects, market analysts, sales and operations consultants, marketing and branding experts and financial analysts to present a new, integrated approach to the retirement living industry," said Straw.

"We see huge potential in 'the other 95%' of retirees and collectively, we wanted to provide developers with the right tools to capture this growing market."

Kimberley Talbot, CEO of the Richmond Club said such a workshop was a timely reminder of potential market opportunities.

"The Untapped program was a really informative and thorough discussion of this emerging approach to retirement living. We see great potential for development in the next decade."

CEO of the RVA, Andrew Giles was extremely pleased with the high attendance at each of the workshops and spoke highly of the informative content delivered by industry representatives.

"The Untapped program touched on a number of important issues and I'm confident that by incorporating positive planning, design, marketing and new innovations into prospective developments, we can really show Australians how great retirement village living can be," said Giles.

David Cotter, CEO of BASS Care is optimistic about the future of retirement living and believes the workshop series helped him pinpoint the industry's major issues.

"I found the Untapped workshop better defined areas that have been of concern to our organisation yet we had been unable to articulate clearly - particularly how to provide an attractive value proposition to potential clients. We are now more aware of how our properties could better meet community demands and how we need to integrate services more fully to serve this demand."

Minter Ellison Lawyers graciously assisted the event by providing venue and catering throughout the series in their Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia offices.

The success of the Untapped program has seen demand for the workshop to be rerun. There has also been international enthusiasm in the program, with RVA New Zealand expressing their interest to ThomsonAdsett and RVA in running a workshop series in New Zealand.