may as well stick this in here...
It was a great party -- but was it worth the cost?
Games made Vancouver a better place to live, even if economic boost fails to materialize
By Harvey Enchin, Vancouver SunMarch 1, 2010 2:11 AM
That was some party. But now that the first phase of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games is over, with the Paralympic Games on deck, it's time to reconsider the impact of hosting the event.
It cost a lot of money, as much as $6 billion depending on who's doing the counting, and studies of the economic impact of the Games suggest a payback in gross domestic product of anywhere from $2 billion to $10.7 billion -- a decent return on investment at the high end, a dead loss at the other. But there's another side of the ledger. Much of this money was used to purchase hard assets that have enduring value and will help the city and province realize social, environmental and economic goals.
In any case, we won't know the benefit the Games delivered until we have more data, and that will be a long time coming.
For example, Tourism Vancouver along with Tourism BC and Tourism Whistler have surveyed 2,500 people standing in lineups at various venues to ask whether the experience has met their expectations, whether they'd come back, whether they'd like to receive information about British Columbia on a continuing basis and, most importantly, whether they would agree to a followup interview after they return home (80 per cent agreed).
That's how tourism officials will quantify the impact.
The formula used to measure the value of tourism is the number of visitors, times the length of stay, times the amount spent daily.
In the first quarter of 2009, according to the Canadian Tourism Commission, there were 407,900 visits to B.C. from the United States, the average stay was 3.6 days and the average spent per day was $154, for a total of just over $226 million. In the same period, there were 215,200 overseas visitors, who stayed on average 18.7 days, and spent an average of $87 per day, for a total of $350 million.
That kind of detail won't be available for months after the Olympic tourists have left but there are some indicators that forecasts of 250,000 visitors to the Games will be met.
Jana Remisova, manager of Tourism Vancouver's visitor counsellors and volunteers, said the number of Games visitors has been far beyond what the agency had anticipated.
Its ambassadors roving the streets met on average 500 people during each four-hour shift. In the first two weeks of February, 6,800 visitors sought information at the agency's main office, compared with 2,800 in all of February 2009.
During the first week of the Games, Tourism Vancouver served 42,469 visitors, five times the normal volume. Canada's Northern House has welcomed more than 70,000 visitors, while LiveCity has drawn 25,000 a day at Yaletown. Hotels that were at 55 per cent capacity before the Games were 98 per cent filled on the eve of competition.
On Feb. 11, YVR recorded the arrival of 160 private planes, the most ever on a single day, and today is expected to be its busiest day in history with 50 per cent more people and 70 per cent more baggage than has been handled previously.
Another reason the full impact will remain unknown is that meeting planners can have a 10-year horizon. Rachael Nocera, Tourism Vancouver's manager of meeting and convention sales for Chicago and the U.S. Midwest, has been shepherding key decision-makers around town during the Games, including one group looking for a destination for 20,000 room-nights. They were reportedly impressed by the city, the scenery, the crowd control and the facilities, particularly the new convention centre, which they described as elegant and inspirational. And did I mention the head of Expedia was in town?
The Olympics should make Nocera's job a little easier because 174 million Americans watched the Vancouver Games on NBC through the first 12 days, 24 per cent more than the entire last season of American Idol, while average viewership of 25.2 million was 20 per cent higher than the 2006 Winter Games.
Indeed, Stephen Pearce, the vice-president of travel with Tourism Vancouver, said the global TV audience is 2.5 billion and 15,000 accredited journalists and other media workers have been spreading the message of Vancouver's -- and B.C.'s -- beauty, cuisine, culture and lifestyle. It is also the most blogged and tweeted Olympics in history, he added. With this kind of exposure, Vancouver and B.C. can be more aggressive in soliciting the tourist, meeting and convention business.
Although tourism was the most obvious card to play at the Olympics, there was plenty of schmoozing going on elsewhere. B.C. was trumpeting green building technology and clean energy; the independent power producers were omnipresent. Both the forest industry and high-tech companies were displaying their wares and handing out business cards, and venture capitalists were busy shaking hands.
More than a year ago, the Vancouver Economic Development Commission, after learning that Olympic hosts see a 15-to 20-per-cent increase in exports, began targeting global companies and invited 75 of them involved in aviation, business services, wireless communications, film production, digital media, engineering, e-learning and more to meet and greet local businesses during the Games. Again, we won't be able to measure the success of this program until PricewaterhouseCoopers, hired to do an impact study, releases its findings in early 2012.
There are some things that defy economic modelling. Hundreds of Vancouverites may have discovered over the last few weeks that cycling is a wonderful way to avoid traffic snarls, parking issues and fuel costs. Cheap transportation, great exercise and no pollution -- priceless.
Similarly, the Canada Line may persuade hundreds, maybe thousands, that public transit beats driving to work. Over time, the benefits of reduced congestion and lower emissions could amount to billions of dollars in savings.
Finally, there is that amorphous concept of social capital. The party to which everyone was invited -- at least to the free events -- may have strengthened our sense of community and reinforced the relationships that make societies more productive.
Will the Olympics boost the economy?
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http://www.vancouversun.com/travel/g...618/story.html