About 150 science and technology centre leaders, accompanied by spouses, from 17 Asia Pacific countries, including the United States, Japan, Thailand and Australia, will visit Dunedin for about four days, if the bid succeeds.
Otago Museum chief executive Shimrath Paul and Clare Wilson, the museum director, exhibitions, planning and development, will both chair sessions and give talks at this year's Asia Pacific Network of Science and Technology Centres (Aspac) conference in Taiwan late next month.
Mr Paul will also give a talk on leadership issues.
There was "a lot of interest in the sector" about how the Otago Museum's Discovery World science centre had become so successful, Ms Wilson said.
The centre in-cludes the museum's popular tropical forest facility, which is home to about 1000 brightly-coloured tropical butterflies.
Ms Wilson said she was "very opti-mistic" that the Otago Museum's bid to host the Aspac annual conference would succeed.
If the bid was not immediately successful, it was likely to win out at a later stage, she said in an interview.
Staging the conference would boost the Dunedin economy through accommodation-related and other spending by the visitors, and would also promote the city's image overseas.
It would be a significant honour to host the conference, which has never previously been held in New Zealand, she said.
Running the event would involve a considerable amount of work, but the museum had high quality facilities and its staff had strong organisational skills.
Hosting arrangements for next year will be decided at the Taiwan conference, which is devoted to the theme "Collaborative Innovation and Part-nerships", to be held in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, on May 26-29.
Aspac has nearly 50 member institutions, including science and technology centres and museums, in 17 countries in Asia and the Pacific, Europe and North America.
