Ashley Ford
Province
The red ink may be rising faster than a Fraser River flood around the expanding Vancouver Convention Centre but there’s big bucks and business in the convention business. The Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre yesterday said it dialed up its best-ever performance last fiscal year since opening in 1987.
Numbers show the Canada Place centre took in $19 million in revenue, generated more than $240 million in economic impact and hosted 350 events for 745,000 delegate days. Centre president Barbara Maple said the numbers bode well for the business prospects of the newly expanding centre.
“The VCEC recorded a 25-per-cent increase over last fiscal year,” she said. “In total, we brought in about 174,000 non-resident delegate days — up more than 34,000 from last year.”
Non-resident delegate days are the number of days that delegates visiting from outside B.C. spend at convention centre events. Non-resident delegates to B.C. have four times more economic impact than leisure visitors because their expense levels are higher.
“Out of the events we hosted throughout the year, some were very high-profile international events, including the World Urban Forum last June, which hosted 10,000 delegates from 150 different countries and generated almost $18 million in non-resident delegate spending,” said Maple.
Fifty-four events are contracted or confirmed for the convention centre after April 1, 2009, she said. Some 29 of the events are expansion bookings that wouldn’t have been able to fit into the existing facility. In total, they represent 738,624 non-resident delegate days with a total economic impact of $1.1 billion.
Despite the centre’s price rising more than $400 million over its original $495-million budget, Stan Hagen, minister of tourism, sports and the arts, says it will be money well spent. “These kinds of business results reinforce the growing importance of the convention industry to B.C. and show the province’s investment in the VCEC’s expansion will pay off,” he said.
The expansion will certainly broaden the appeal of Vancouver as a major convention city. It will offer a combined total of nearly 500,000 square feet of function space and will serve as the international media and broadcast centre for the 2010 Games.
Nevertheless, critics argue that cost is too high and often point out that 13 years ago Las Vegas casino giant Steve Wynn offered to build the city a convention centre for free with a 1,000-room hotel, shops, theatres and a permanent $25-million stage/base for the famed Cirque de Soleil. But plans also included a casino and Wynn was unceremoniously sent packing.
© The Vancouver Province 2007