Industry Meetings Go North

By Margo McCall -- Tradeshow Week, 6/19/2006

Canadian cities lately have made big strides in landing some of the industry's most coveted meetings.

Toronto will host the Professional Convention Management Assn.'s annual meeting Jan. 7–10, 2007, as well as the 2009 annual meeting of the American Society of Assn. Executives & the Center. And Meeting Professionals Intl.'s World Education Congress will be held in Montreal in 2007 and Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2010.

ASAE's meeting generally draws about 5,000 association executives and features 800 exhibitors in an 80,700 square foot showfloor. The PCMA gathering attracts about 3,000 attendees, and the MPI conference 3,500.

But far more important than the audiences' numbers are their buying influence.

The Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau estimated that attendees at this year's Jan. 8–11 PCMA meeting would generate $100 million in near-term bookings, in addition to the more than $11 million they spent on food, lodging and transportation during the meeting.

PCMA spokeswoman Sandy Eitel said her organization is excited about holding its first annual meeting in Toronto. "They've been a tremendous partner for us," she said. "We have a significant number of members in Canada, and it's a nice opportunity to broaden our market reach to Canadian members."

PCMA, which previously held smaller meetings in Vancouver and Montreal, will hold its annual meeting in Seattle in 2008 and New Orleans in 2009.

Tara Gordon, director of association sales for the Toronto Convention & Visitors Assn., said her city hopes the PCMA meeting, to be held at the Metro Toronto Convention Center, leads to at least as much future business as Philadelphia forecast.

But that business does come with a price. "It's highly competitive. I don't think we've been in an environment that's as competitive," Gordon said. "The amount of work is phenomenal. But the success that we feel will come out of PCMA in the year ahead makes it worth it. We're going for the ring."

It helps that Canadian cities can draw on assistance from the federal and provincial governments. For instance, the Canadian Tourism Commission and the Ontario Ministry of Tourism helped Toronto with its PCMA bid.

Toronto is no stranger to such high-profile meetings. In 2002, it hosted a meeting of the Intl. Assn. of Assembly Managers, and in 2002, it was the site for both the MPI World Education Congress and the Health Care Exhibitors Assn. annual convention.

ASAE selected Toronto from among seven finalists to host the meeting, which the association deems "the Super Bowl of conventions." The meeting will be held in Boston this year, Chicago in 2007, San Diego in 2008 and Los Angeles in 2010. At the same time it picked Toronto as the 2009 site, ASAE designated St. Louis as the meeting's site in 2011 and Dallas in 2012.

According to ASAE, 20 percent of attendees at its annual meeting book their own conventions in the host city within five years. The last time the ASAE annual meeting was held in Toronto was 1988.

In announcing Vancouver's landing of the MPI meeting, Mariela McIlwraith, president of the group's British Columbia chapter, estimated attendees' collective buying power at $10.9 billion. Vancouver previously hosted MPI professional education conferences in 1994 and 1999, but this will be the first time the larger meeting will be held there.

That wouldn't have been possible without the expansion currently underway at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre. Scheduled for completion in 2008, the expansion will triple exhibit, pre-function and ballroom space to 472,140 sq. ft.

MPI is "... a group we couldn't host before the expansion," said VCEC President Barbara Maple, who co-chaired the two MPI conferences previously held in her city. "It's not just the importance of the meeting. It's also that of future business it might generate."

The MPI meeting will also come on the heels of the 2010 Winter Olympics, during which the VCEC will serve as media and broadcast headquarters. And the level of cooperation and coordination required for hosting an international Olympics event should make the city fairly well prepared to show off for the meeting planners' group.

The Canadian Tourism Commission, Tourism Vancouver and the provincial Ministry of Tourism, Sports & the Arts were all involved in the MPI effort. Hosting such meetings also requires cooperation from local hotels and restaurants.

"The whole community needs to come together to host the things that display your community and destination," Maple said.