Canadian Officials Expect Steady Climb In U.S. Meetings

<B> Canadian Officials Expect Steady Climb In U.S. Meetings</B>

By Carolyn Green

While final 1997 tallies are not yet in, the Canadian Tourism Commission reported that the country's destinations appear to be attracting more U.S. meetings business, a trend expected to continue this year.

Indeed, the number of trips by U.S.-based group delegates during the January-June period last year increased by 7.3 percent from a year earlier while spending by delegates grew by 9.7 percent over the same period.

Chris Cahill, chairman of CTC's meetings and incentive travel committee, attributed the increased business to factors including a weak Canadian dollar and rising U.S. hotel rates.

"We've seen increased pricing in hotels in the United States so that Canadian cities are still a bargain," Cahill said. "Add to that the fact we've had a declining exchange rate."

For this year, CTC projects a 3.5 percent rise in U.S. group volume and a 10 percent jump in spending.

One reason that U.S. planners will spend more, Cahill said, is that American groups often meet during peak season. "If you look at occupancy rates in Toronto, Vancouver and a lot of the key markets that are attractive to the U.S. market, there's not a lot of space."

Toronto, for example, last year hosted 624 meetings with 50 or more delegates, an increase of about 9 percent from 1996, said Gino Giancola, vice president of sales for Tourism Toronto. This year's final tally should be a 2-3 percentage point increase over 1997, he said, citing last year's expansion of the Metro Toronto Convention Center and the city's relatively low crime rate as growth engines.

For Vancouver, zeroing in on service is paramount in attracting conference business. Bruce MacMillan, vice president of Tourism Vancouver, said the group has introduced a customer service initiative called Vancouver's Service Edge. To help develop various elements of the program, which targets the CVB's best customers, Tourism Vancouver formed an advisory board of leading meeting planners, including MPI International president Anna Lee Chabot, to provide ongoing feedback over a two-year period and to help develop various initiatives.

For historic Quebec City, meetings business likely will remain flat in 1998, said Helene Pomerleau, sales manager of meetings and incentives for the Greater Quebec Area Tourism & Convention Bureau.

Pomerleau, however, is optimistic that as a result of a new convention center that opened in 1996 and the six-month-old Quebec Trade Show Center, there will be a marked improvement in the region's ability to attract more meetings.

Expecting a 1 percent gain in the number of meetings this year, Chantal Langelier, a researcher with the Greater Montreal Convention & Tourism Bureau, said the total number of city meetings declined marginally last year. However, the number of delegates attending conventions at the city's convention center, the Palais des Congres de Montreal, grew by about 3 percent.