COVID-19: Convention planners await signal on future for $1 billion meetings business

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The Vancouver Convention Centre is bustling with vaccination candidates these days, not international convention delegates, as it stands in as an immunization clinic to help fend off the COVID-19 that has kept it mostly closed for more than a year.

“We are a vaccination centre and probably the largest in the Lower Mainland, we’re doing 3,000 (patients) a day,” said the centre’s vice-president, Claire Smith. “Not the convention business, by any means, but the building is active and relatively busy, and just seeing people even come down to have their vaccinations, it’s a really positive thing to be part of it.”

Instead of being a cornerstone in Vancouver’s meetings sector, usually a $1 billion business for the city, the centre is making do with bits of business related to COVID, as a set for film work and a physically distanced space for the immersive Imagine Van Gogh exhibit.

“It certainly helps us, but it would never replace the amount of business that we’ve had to displace,” Smith said.

The toll is observable in the financials of the B.C. Pavilion Corp., the Crown corporation that operates the convention centre and B.C. Place Stadium. Sales revenue plummeted 89 per cent to just $8 million for last year, according to the corporation’s service plan, with just $26 million expected for this year. That left a $40 million hole over those two years for the province to step in and fill as part of its COVID-19 relief funding.

Typically, the convention centre hosts about 500 to 550 events per year, of varying sizes — from city-wide conventions to trade shows and even weddings, Smith said. In its first pandemic year, it held 40.

“Right there that tells you the magnitude of the number of events that were lost,” Smith said.

The centre, however, still has 17 major events on its books for 2022, most booked before the pandemic but some that were rolled over from pandemic-period postponements, “so we’re anticipating that 2022 is actually going to be quite a busy year.”

However, a lot depends on when B.C. will establish parameters to again allow in-person gatherings, said Royce Chwin, CEO of Tourism Vancouver, which is important in a highly competitive sector where other jurisdictions have already done so and even begun to allow smaller conferences to happen again.

“Our U.S. sales agent just came back from some in-person meetings in Washington D.C. that were sold out,” Chwin said, where people were “excited to get back.”

And while representatives for the meetings sector have offered input about reopening to a provincial tourism round table, “we still don’t have anything published.”

“That’s sending a message that’s making planners nervous about what will happen for the balance of this year, and in particular, 2022,” Chwin said.

In the U.K, the BRIT music awards hosted an audience of 4,000 vaccinated attendees, which involved mandatory testing as part of a data-gathering exercise. And meeting planners are looking to Singapore, where smaller meetings have been allowed since last fall, as an example of how to safely resume conferences.

Here in Canada, Saskatchewan on April 23 unveiled its parameters for a five-phase reopening based on rates of vaccination in the adult population that would allow for limited indoor gatherings as early as July 6.

Chwin said the tourism industry’s meetings and events working group has developed ideas for a safe-restart plan that have been submitted to government and it would be helpful if B.C. could go ahead with smaller meetings by this fall.

“That would be a signal of confidence to the industry that we’re starting to build back for something that’s been flatlining,” he said.

Jobs Economic Recovery and Innovation Minister Ravi Kahlon said the province is taking a “careful step-by-step approach” to the next phase of its restart plan, which involves a tourism advisory table on which Pavilion Corp. CEO Ken Cretney is a member.

Kahlon said more details of what comes next will be revealed after the May long weekend.

“We know this virus can surge quickly. That’s why, like very decision in this pandemic, we will move forward step-by-step based on Dr. Henry’s advice,” Kahlon said in a written response to questions.

At the Vancouver Convention Centre, Smith said they’re taking cues from provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, but watching B.C. vaccination rates increase while COVID-19 case rates decrease has been encouraging.

The 2020 Pacific Dental Conference, held at the centre, turned out to be one of B.C.’s first major COVID-19 transmission events and Smith agreed they will have to “build confidence over time that events are safe, and that they’re also really fundamental.” The convention centre has put considerable effort into redesigning how in-person meetings can take place safely by limiting contacts between people, maintaining physical distances and using technology.

The convention sector quickly pivoted to online, virtual events during the pandemic, which has taught a lot of organizations how they can use that to extend their range, said Jenn Abbott, CEO of Vancouver-based International Conference Services.

At the same time, groups are also gradually getting back to planning in-person so-called hybrid events that combine face-to-face meetings that include online content.

International Conference Services is putting together one such hybrid conference for 200 delegates in Singapore, which will convene another 100 delegates online. Abbott said the ground rules involve a lot of COVID-19 testing and grouping of delegates into cohorts to limit contacts.

Abbott said regional and national conventions have the best likelihood of resuming first. Predicting when international conventions will ramp-up again would require a crystal ball.

“It depends on what area of the world you’re talking about, but I think overall, with the rollout of the vaccines, we definitely have a lot of clients that are more optimistic.”

depenner@postmedia.com

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