Greater Vancouver Convention & Visitors Bureau
by Alan Daniels
A newspaper advertisement placed by the newly formed Vancouver Tourist Association in 1902 stated “Vancouver has excellent accommodation and a large number of private boarding houses. Rates are the same as other coast cities.” A photo taken two years later outside the bureau’s first office at 439 Granville Street shows a shingle which reads: “Headquarters for visitors and tourists--free information bureau.” Today Vancouver is one of North America’s hottest destinations, attracting 6.5 million overnight visitors who spend $1.7 billion each year. The city hosted 328 conventions attracting 148,000 delegates in 1994.
Vancouver’s potential for creating wealth and jobs through tourism was identified as early as 1929 when members of the Vancouver Publicity Bureau concluded that “money expended to advertise the tourist attractions of the city brought better returns than that expended on advertising for new industries.” Inspired by a report that 99,495 automobiles carrying 354,015 passengers had entered B.C. over the Pacific Highway at Douglas and Huntingdon, the bureau took city council members to dinner at the Terminal City Club and promptly hit them up for an advertising grant of $35,000. The request sparked a lively debate with some councillors arguing that the bureau should not be subsidized by taxpayers’ dollars. However Mayor W.H. Makin, noting that the ratepayers get the benefit of every dollar spent, said: “I am anxious that we should develop the modern spirit of looking at things in a big way and not with a village outlook.”
In 1935 the Vancouver Sun campaigned for a convention bureau. Hotel Devonshire manager Karl de Morest pointed out that Bellingham hosted three times as many meetings as Vancouver and alderman J.J. Mcrae said: “Our merchants need the business that conventions bring, and our city can stand a little of the cheer that throngs of visitors bring to the city.” By 1950 the convention business had started to grow despite Vancouver"s geographic disadvantage of being “at the end of the line.”
Vancouver Tourist Association and the B.C. Automobile Association were run by a common executive board, but in 1952 they split. Vancouver’s “happiest marriage,” as it was described by VTA president Fred Brown, ended by common consent at noon on January 12. Three years later the bureau became the Greater Vancouver Tourist Association and in November, 1963, after moving to new premises at 650 Burrard, it got a new name: Greater Vancouver Visitors and Convention Bureau. This lasted until 1973 when it became the Greater Vancouver Convention and Visitors Bureau. Perhaps it couldn’t decide where the emphasis was. In any event from 1986 the agency has been known simply as Tourism Vancouver and the convention business was turned over to crown-owned B.C. Pavilions Corp.
Not altogether by chance, Vancouver’s millionth convention delegate arrived during Convention Week in April 1967 but it was another decade before Canadian Pacific’s Pier B-C, on the central city waterfront, was suggested as the site for a Downtown convention centre. Tourism minister Grace McCarthy asked former B.C. Hydro chair Dr. Gordon Shrum to be project director. Shrum, who was then 82, must have known what was coming. “As long as it’s within the next 10 years,” he remarked with a cynicism that proved well-founded.
The facility, to be funded by three levels of government, was initially projected to cost $25 million. By 1980, with construction not yet begun, it had soared to $52 million, then, within months, $80 million. By the time steel was ordered, in September, 1981, it was $100 million. A year later in November 1981, it was $135 million and politicians were starting to panic. On December 8, 1981, Premier Bill Bennett postponed construction indefinitely.
Then Expo 86 came to the rescue with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s dramatic announcement that Ottawa would fund the Pier B-C development to be the Canada Pavilion at Expo. It would be 9,000 square metres under one roof, room enough for 10,000 people. The final cost for what is now called Canada Place was $144.8 million. It opened as a convention centre on July 9, 1987, to host the International Culinary Olympics, but soon proved inadequate as Vancouver’s reputation grew.
As this book was going to press, a major new convention facility was projected. All that remained to be decided was which of the three bidders would get approval.
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