3,000 U.S. lawyers among customers signing up to use the expanded facility through 2019
Gillian Shaw
Sun
What do you get when you get together 3,000 lawyers? Approximately $18 million, which is what Vancouver’s Convention & Exhibition Centre estimates 3,000 delegates will bring to B.C.’s economy when the American Association for Justice holds its annual conference in 2010, marking the first time the association representing American trial lawyers has chosen Vancouver as its convention destination.
They are joined by a fast-growing lineup of customers who are booking Vancouver’s soon-to-be expanded convention centre right through to 2019, with current bookings expected to add a whopping $1.1 billion in direct and indirect economic spinoffs to the provincial economy.
“I think it bodes well,” VCEC president Barbara Maple said. “We are starting to get a lot of interest in the convention centre and we believe there has been pent-up demand.
“Groups have wanted to be here, but it was not only the size of our facility . . . we didn’t have the complexity of room configuration that they needed.”
The facility already has 54 non-Olympic events confirmed or contracted for April 1, 2009, and the decade beyond — 28 would have been too large to squeeze into the pre-expanded centre.
If you’re one of those people who can’t plan ahead for the weekend and are wondering just who would book an event for 2019, you’ll have to wait to find out. That event is confirmed only, not yet under contract, and so the VCEC won’t disclose what it is.
However, the forward-thinking Canadian Cardiovascular Congress is planning to meet here in 2017, by which time the new convention centre will already be eight years old.
The new combined facility, with delays pushing back its scheduled completion to the spring of 2009, will have more than 316,000 square feet of convention and meeting space; triple the current centre and enough to cover the equivalent of four city blocks.
It also answers a demand among convention planners for break-out space, those meeting rooms where delegates gather in smaller groups. The current centre has 20 such spaces, while the newly expanded one will add another 52.
And if you’re planning a wedding for 10,000, note the new facility will have Canada’s largest convention centre ballroom with more than 55,000 square feet of swing room, up from the current 16,600 square feet.
The combination of tripling the convention centre size and improving the mix of space offerings is working, according to Maple.
“We’re attracting more of the same size of events that we have today, but we are also attracting large events,” she said. “One of the goals of the convention centre is not only to book bigger groups, but to book more groups.”
The expanded size means the centre can host simultaneously the equivalent of two of the largest groups it can handle currently, according to Maple.
“We will carry on with the groups with 2,000 to 2,500 delegates,” she said. “That traditionally is the size that makes up the bulk of the market.”
Not only are a lot of delegates expected, they also spend more money than your average tourist.
Maple said the typical spend attributed to conference delegates is $500 a day, an estimate that includes everything from their room and meals to the cost of the convention space itself. That is four to five times the expected take from regular visitors to the city.
“The other thing about these groups is that they travel throughout the province,” said Maple. “They often come back on holidays or with their families to visit and we all benefit from that.”
The Olympics will garner the lion’s share of the first year’s bookings after the new centre opens, with that organization slated to fill the entire space from late fall of 2009 right through March 2010.
When it clears out, the Pacific Dental Conference running form April 13 to April 17 will be the first-post Olympic customer bringing with it more than 9,000 attendees. It will mark the 21st year that conference has been coming to Vancouver and over the years it has grown to the point that it can only squeeze in with the convention centre relying on industry partners such as hotels. The VCEC said the expansion means that for the first time the dental conference will fit into one facility.
