Event Power

When we talk about the business centres of North America the geography that immediately comes to mind is Bay Street or Wall Street. We don’t often think of Albert St or Second Ave as primary commercial centres that attract thousands of business travellers daily who fill hotel rooms and airplane seats. No…for this province, the drivers of tourist or business traffic are events.

And we have a couple big ones on right now. Regina is hosting Agribition…Saskatoon is playing host to the best curlers in the world.

For Regina, the return of Agribition after a COVID hiatus sounds like music to the ears of hoteliers and restauranteurs in the Queen City. The local hotel association says occupancy is up from an average of 32% for the first 10 months of the year to roughly75%.

Hoteliers in Saskatoon are also seeing a positive impact, reporting a bump of 20-percent in occupancy as a result of the Olympic curling.

Clearly vaccine passports are helping as travel is easier and occupancy rates in the mid-70s could be close to full capacity as a portion of rooms are closed due to labor shortages.