With 54 conferences last year, business at the Victoria Conference Centre business was back to about 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, according to Destination Greater Victoria’s chief executive.
Paul Nursey said with catering, opening receptions and offsite events, the multi-day conferences injected an estimated $50 million into Victoria’s economy in 2023.
“Each conference delegate spends about three to four times what a leisure traveller spends, and they come in the off-peak season,” he said.
Destination Greater Victoria, which has worked on promoting conferences for the city-owned Victoria Conference Centre on Douglas Street since 2017, bid on more leads last year than in 2019, Nursey said. “We don’t win them all, and of course we don’t have space for them all, but the pipeline is solid and we’re almost back to pre-pandemic numbers.”
Last year, the conference centre booked 83,500 delegate days, down from 118,661 in 2019.
James Burrough, the conference centre’s director of sales, said rebuilding the client base has been a steady process, as sales are often made years in advance.
“Our booking pace for 2025 is looking very strong at this point,” he added, noting the centre is now booking conferences for 2028.
Bill Lewis, general manger of the Magnolia Hotel and chair of the Hotel Association of Victoria, said hotels and restaurants see an increase in weeknight business whenever there’s a conference in town. “Overall, it’s a great economic driver for the hotel and the restaurant industry.”
While Victoria has a strong tourist season, it’s better for businesses to have a steady supply of customers year-round, he said.
Conferences are particularly helpful for the four or five largest downtown hotels, he said. “The Hotel Grand Pacific has some 300 rooms and the Fairmont has nearly 500 — that’s a lot of rooms to sell,” Lewis said. “If you get a lot of conference delegates here, it tends to help.”
But Nursey said Victoria is only able to bid on about 25 per cent of Canadian industry and trade association meetings and conferences due to the conference centre’s smaller size, according to a study by commercial real estate service group CBRE that was commissioned by Destination Greater Victoria during the pandemic.
Built in 1989, the 77,000-square-foot conference centre can only handle about 2,000 conference delegates at a time.
Some of the larger conferences held in the Victoria Conference Centre this year included an annual meeting for the Society for the Neural Control of Movement in April, a conference and trade show for the Aquaculture Association of Canada in May, and the Canada West Health Leaders Conference in October.
“That’s something we’re going to wrestle with strategically over the next five or 10 years,” Nursey said. “We really are a niche player, but it is important business for our downtown community and the merchants.”
In a statement, Victoria city spokesperson Colleen Mycroft said that the city is has identified redeveloping the Victoria Conference Centre as a priority in its latest economic action plan, Victoria 3.0.
In the meantime, city staff have been providing input regarding possible conference centre improvements to Destination Greater Victoria, which is developing a tourism master plan for the city expected to be released sometime this year, she said.
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