Un-conventional

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This article was published 12/09/2020 (1864 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Labour Day typically signals the beginning of the busiest season for the event and meetings business.

Even during the current pandemic conditions, Drew Fisher, CEO of the RBC Convention Centre, hopes that will still be the case this year as well, although to what extent and with what volumes he can’t say.

September is going to be busier than August at the convention centre but Fisher said he is still projecting a devastating 75 per cent decline in revenue this year at massive three-storey facility.

The opening of the Imagine Van Gogh exhibit later this month, featuring giant projections of the artist’s paintings, may be just what the centre needs to get people used to coming out again.

“We look forward to welcoming people to the convention centre. The experience looks like it will incredible,” Fisher said of the Van Gogh exhibit. “It’s going to be great to have guests coming through, that’s for sure.”

That said, the centre has actually remained open throughout the past six months. It has continued to hold events, but they have all been held under strict adherence to provincial guidelines.

Those guidelines, which Fisher said are followed unwaveringly, allow for gatherings of more than 50 people but they have to be separated and they can’t co-mingle.

The centre has held events for more than 50 people, but the square footage that’s now required for a 100-person meeting is much greater than it used to be.

“We recently had a meeting for just under 100 people and it took up half of our ballroom, just under 10,000 square feet,” Fisher said. “Before the pandemic-that would have easily fit in a space of about 3,000 square feet.”

And while the centre may have been officially open throughout the pandemic, every one of the hundreds of staff and contract employees have been affected.

There have been wage roll backs, term positions eliminated, job sharing for essential service positions and a hiring freeze imposed.

“This is our work family,” he said. “The effect on them has been incredibly heartbreaking. Every single one of our staff members throughout the centre has been affected.”

The centre applied for and received approval from the city for a $7.5-million loan guarantee and Fisher said that every expense line is reviewed daily and there have been cuts across the board.

“There are many factors that have been disappointing but what’s most disappointing about the past few months is that it was to be one the best years on record,” Fisher said. “We had 37 conventions on the book including some really large medical conventions.”

But Fisher said there is some solace in the fact that 80 per cent of the cancellations have been rebooked for the future and between the convention centre’s own sales force, those at Tourism Winnipeg and the collaborative Team Winnipeg group, they are all hard at work booking the remaining 20 per cent.

Meetings and conventions and all businesses that involve large gatherings of people were the first affected by the measures to contain the pandemic and will one of the last to recover.

And the convention centre’s economic footprint spreads out even larger than its 260,000 square feet of floor space. For instance, in 2017 the delegates and attendees at convention centre events spent close to $40 million in the city and booked more than 140,000 hotel room nights

“That is our focus,” Fisher said. “We want to bring large groups into Winnipeg that fill the hotels, the restaurants, the transportation facilities, the tourist destinations. We want to see everyone benefit from this.

“That business unfortunately has been postponed. It is something we are continuously focused on.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca