[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by daud

I work in this industry and can assure you that the EY centre is not really the core issue. Most (not all) of the clients at the EY centre run tradeshows for consumers that run on extremely tight budgets. They can't afford the rates being charged at the Shaw Centre. This is why many ran their shows at Lansdowne before. There are certainly a few shows at the EY, or that have moved to the EY that have the budget for the Shaw centre but the shaw centre does not have adequate contiguous floorspace for large scale exhibitions and some of these clients. This is one prime factor in them losing big conventions.

The shaw centre is a great facility, but it loses business time and again for a few reasons.
1. It isn't quite big enough to run certain shows. 2. Our tier 2 airport and lack of direct air connections mean they lose much international business to Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver (known as MTV in the industry). Conference Organizers want direct connections. Ottawa is great for that in the Canadian market, but severely lacking for international delegates. 3. We don't have enough available hotel rooms connected to the Shaw centre. Their hotel partner, the Westin has quite a bit of exhibit floorspace itself and its rooms are often full with other business, so that partnership isn't an ideal one. They need a large connected hotel to that facility that will make a better strategic partner. Conference Organizers prefer to deal with as few hotels as possible, in Ottawa's case, they are dealing with 4+ hotels because of availability issues.

The shaw centre (IMHO) needs to really focus on the canadian market, canadian associations, canadian corporate business and high end public events and work selling those sectors to the max. I know they are closing some good international business too, One Young World was a good example. However, the 3 big cities are closing deals 10 times the size and I think Ottawa really needs to market where they have the highest chance of success.

I look at other markets like Winnipeg. Their tourism bureau and convention centre manage to close a tonne of business, they are in this city all the time marketing the Canadian Association Market and frankly Ottawa is a far better destination for a conference. They need to be going head to head with cities like that.

All this being said, there are very good people working to bring conventions to Ottawa and lots of successes. Their budgeted numbers were probably a bit lofty to start but I really think they need to hustle certain markets more and others less.

You make a lot of good points all of which should have been well known when the decision was taken to build the Shaw Centre. Too many second tier cities chasing the same business. When Halifax finishes its convention centre there will be even more competition.