Nina Kressler told OBJ last week the region’s second-largest meeting and convention space is seeing “significant uptake” in bookings for major gatherings with more than 300 participants.
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After suffering through lean times earlier in the pandemic, the Shaw Centre is on pace to attract the most events and visitors in its 12-year history in 2023, its chief executive says.
Nina Kressler told OBJ last week the region’s second-largest meeting and convention space is seeing “significant uptake” in bookings for major gatherings with more than 300 participants as associations from across Canada and around the world look to satisfy pent-up demand for face-to-face interaction.
While Kressler and her management team expected many organizations to scale back the size of their delegations as they slowly returned to in-person events, she said that hasn’t been the case.
“We found the complete opposite,” Kressler said, noting a number of large international associations as well as domestic clients have booked the facility this year.
“People are spending money on sending delegates. How long that will last, I don’t know, but certainly right now we’re seeing the great desire for people to get together as a group.”
Opened in 2011, the Shaw Centre has 192,000 square feet of meeting space, second only to the EY Centre among convention facilities in the National Capital Region.
After hosting 486 total events, including 47 conventions, and turning a profit of $1.34 million on revenues of nearly $18 million in 2018-19, the building saw attendance plummet during the COVID-19 crisis as most public meeting spaces were shuttered in a bid to halt the spread of the virus.
The Shaw Centre hosted just eight events in the 2020-21 fiscal year while posting a net deficit of $3.66 million.
The facility began to rebound last year, hosting a total of 60 events, including one convention and one trade show.
But its gross revenues of $1.92 million were well below its goal of $3.3 million, and the building lost a whopping $4.3 million. The facility remained afloat thanks to a $5.3-million bailout from the provincial government.
But Kressler said the Shaw Centre’s fortunes are turning.
As an example, she touted Air France’s recent decision to launch direct flights from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to Ottawa starting this summer. Kressler said Shaw Centre staff have been working with organizations such as Ottawa Tourism to compile a “tremendous” list of potential European customers who could take advantage of the new route.
“When we can go back to that great list of clients and make this announcement, it makes their life a lot easier when they’re looking to bring an international convention to Ottawa,” she said.
“It’s opened up the gateway for us to certainly attract more business, particularly international business. What’s exciting for us is that business generally comes in July and August when the convention centre has a little more down time.”
Overseas bookings generally require “significantly more lead time” to finalize, Kressler added, so the new routes could take several years to bear fruit.
“This allows us to go out with messaging and incentives and great packages to pitch,” she said. “It just will take a little bit longer, but we’ve already had some great traction in the international market … It can only get better.”
According to Ottawa Tourism, total room nights booked at the city’s meeting halls fell 91 per cent between 2019 and 2020. The industry was hit even harder in 2021, when bookings were down 94 per cent compared with two years earlier.
Still, several other local meeting and convention spaces recently told OBJ they echoed Kressler’s optimism for the year ahead.
Chris Bosley, general manager of the Infinity Convention Centre in the city’s south end, said last month he expects 2023 will be the busiest year yet for the facility, which opened in 2016 and has about 17,000 square feet of meeting space.
Meanwhile, EY Centre GM Neill Bales said bookings for 2023 are on par with 2019, when the 220,000-square-foot facility staged 120 events that drew a total of 750,000 visitors.
