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GVPOD is the podcast of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. President and CEO Bridgitte Anderson talks to leaders in the business community about the challenges and opportunities they experience, as well as issues impacting our region.
Bridgitte Anderson (00:02):
Welcome back to another episode of GVPOD, Greater Vancouver's business podcast where we delve into the challenges and opportunities facing our region. I'm Bridgitte Anderson, president and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. This is episode one of our newest series Hosting Rights, amidst a backdrop of major events that are coming to town like FIFA, world Cup 2026, Taylor Swift Concerts or the Gray Cup. This series will ponder and seek answers to critical question. How does Vancouver not only maintain its world-class hosting capabilities, but also ensure an unforgettable stay for all seizing the full potential of these opportunities presents multifaceted challenges. And who better to start off the series as we chart the path to optimizing the economic, developmental and legacy impacts than Roy Schwinn, president and CEO of destination Vancouver as a leading figure behind the organization steering Vancouver's tourism event hosting strategies, Royce brings a wealth of insights on transforming our city into a magnet for visitors through the magic of travel. Welcome to Give Pod Royce. Nice to see you.
Royce Chwin (01:12):
Nice to see you too, Bridgitte. Thank you for having me.
Bridgitte Anderson (01:16):
So maybe we could start with a little contextual background information. Let's start off with the core purpose of destination Vancouver and how really the strategy there shapes the promotion of the city, like the interconnectedness I think between the tourism experience and also economic development.
Royce Chwin (01:35):
Sure. Let's go back just a little bit to understand this one of the silver linings from the pandemic and that allowed the organization to completely reset its mandate, its purpose and reason for being the result of that Tourism Vancouver transformation into destination Vancouver really solidified a core purpose and that purpose is to transform people and communities through the power of travel. So what does that really mean for us? It's not just about getting a visitor here. It's not just about selling margaritas by the pool, but what does travel due to a community and to individuals as a result of it landing in the destination? And that could take form in terms of whether it's a leisure visitor, somebody coming here through a business event, a conference, a cultural event, a sporting event, any number of those things that are showing up in a city, our transformational opportunities where tourism is not the end game, but socioeconomic transformation is the win for us and it really supports destination competitiveness.
Bridgitte Anderson (02:41):
Now we saw during Covid just what it was like to have no tourism and to have very few visitors and the kind of impact that it had on our economy. I think the social fabric of our city, a number of other things. Now we are a few years post pandemic. Have you seen a much more bounce back and are we at the numbers that we used to be?
Royce Chwin (03:02):
We've definitely seen a bounce back. It's not hard when you're lying on the floor, the only place you can go is up. But to give us some credit, Vancouver is in a fairly unique position in terms of its location on the Pacific side, it's airport, it's transport, the very offering that Vancouver is, it is a small big city and as a result we have been one of the top performing cities in any number of destination performance indicators that we look at, not just in Canada but across North America. Whether or not that is an occupancy, whether or not that is an average daily rate, whether or not that is an overall spend or overnight visitation record number of cruise ships have come back to Vancouver as one of the starting hubs for one of the most successful tours or in demand tours in the world, which is Vancouver to Alaska. So a lot of the right conditions we were able to jump on quickly to rebuild, not recover, but rebuild a visitor economy.
Bridgitte Anderson (04:07):
So I want to say show me the money. I mean just how important is tourism for our economy? Have we got some data, some recent data that can show just how significant an economic impact it has?
Royce Chwin (04:20):
You bet. We're tracking right now in around eight and a half billion dollars. And that is for the metro Vancouver area. That's how big it is. And that's a direct and indirect spend. And so when we use those numbers and we share them and people say, well what is that? Is that just hotels and restaurants? No, that's hotels, restaurants, attractions, retail. And then think about all of the ancillary services that support all those businesses that deliver an experience to whether it's a visitor or local. So the wide ranging impacts of our industry, we really are an industry of industries and that's why it's such a significant and sizable number for Vancouver. We expect it to go to 13 billion by 2026. That is the current trajectory we're on now, which is great news.
Bridgitte Anderson (05:07):
And that trajectory is in part in large part responsible. We were both in the room where the tourism minister, Lana Popin, she was the one who said the calendar of awesomeness and Minister Popin was correct. What we have lined up for very Vancouver over the next few years is quite simply remarkable. Whether we're talking about Gray Cup, Invictus Games, Junos, Taylor Swift concerts, of course FIFA World Cup, what are we doing to make sure that we leverage these events so they don't just become a blip?
Royce Chwin (05:41):
I think that's the multimillion dollar question we have lined up in our calendar for the city is quite unprecedented. And talking to my peer circle of cities around North America, there is a lot of envy to have this wealth of events coming into the city. I am not sure that our industry writ large community writ large really understands the significance of the collective momentum versus an individual event, an individual event. And I think therein lies the opportunities is to say this momentum both regionally and internationally with the biggest sporting event in the world, FIFA culminating almost in fifa, and that what is the perspective? What are the things that we need to do to harness that to reduce any lag in impact to our economy going forward out to 2030? That's what we have to solve collectively, and that's beyond tourism. I think as a destination whole,
Bridgitte Anderson (06:41):
You raised such a good point because media I think has not really taken that broad view yet. It has been focused on the individual events and there's been a lot of focus on World Cup and a lot of focus on the cost. So when you look at these events broad based and you get to that 30,000 foot level and stringing them all along together, yes the city has to make investments and government has to make investments, but from your perspective and your expertise, is there a strong enough return on investment that makes it worth putting some money towards ensuring that it's a good experience? Whether we're talking about World Cup or whether we're talking about Gray Cop,
Royce Chwin (07:23):
I think there's enough evidence there that we've seen historically. So we often look at a best case study in that as the 2010 games. What did it leave in terms of immediate spend and then legacy infrastructure investment. Now recognizing the events that are showing up in our city are not necessarily to that scale. And I would argue not even fifa, it's a different style event, but where it may lack in some of those pieces where these things collectively excel is in the media recognition and attention. If we play our cards right to not only recognize Vancouver as a place to visit, but potentially a place to visit and then invest and then stay or look at other opportunities within the region writ large, to me that's the greater opportunity and those will be the measurable outcomes that we're going to have to look at quite frankly. And we know that in trying to attract talent or investment, nobody's going to move to a place that's just concrete, glass and steel. They're going to want to come to a place that is vibrant. They're also going to want to come to a place that has the ability to attract all sizes and scales of events.
Bridgitte Anderson (08:33):
So how do we then collectively, you and me and our organizations that represent a lot of members, how do we get the business community thinking about this as an economic development opportunity? What is the way to really key into that very important conversation? Because quite right, I mean it's not a tourism opportunity. We need to be leveraging these for investment to attract talent, to attract other business leaders, to come into Vancouver, to set up shop to whatever they need to do. It is a really finite opportunity where the eyes of the world are on us.
Royce Chwin (09:09):
Great question. Much harder to answer, but I'll answer it. I'll answer it with something really simple that seems to ground a lot of people. So all of these things, all of these events are coming here. What business problems are we trying to solve that these events will allow us to try to take a bite into over the next five to 10 years? And we're not going to align on everything and that's okay, but what things could we align on that would interest different factions of the business community to say, okay, you know what, actually this makes sense to sponsor this or to show up in this place. I actually can create a connection here or through my international network of which I'm a regional office in Vancouver, I need to get the message out. If we don't get clarity on the business problems we're trying to solve through these events and how we use them beyond simply as a mechanism for tourism, then we're going to lose out because this really is a generational hit we're going to have here in the next 24, 36 months.
Bridgitte Anderson (10:05):
Well, the top of my mind, some of those business problems or challenges, well we've got attracting talent is always quite challenging and correlated to the affordability of our region. So there's one of those, but also creating the environment so that businesses want to invest in our region. So that'd be number two. Number three, public safety. We have an opportunity to address some of the issues around public safety, homelessness, mental health and addiction so that it is a good visitor experience. What are some of the top ones in your mind that we've got an opportunity to address?
Royce Chwin (10:41):
I think you've actually identified some of the critical pieces for us as well, because without some of those things in place, it very much impacts the visitor economy and not going to have any fear here. To step into the third one that is around cleanliness and safety in the city, which is absolutely critical not only from a community perspective of course, but also visitor perspective because those are our brand advocates when they leave the city and not just from the perspective of, Hey, let's bring my friend back to Vancouver to visit and go see X concert, but hey, Vancouver presents an opportunity for investment or a business or a lifestyle that I want and then it become a community contributor. So how do we solve that? I think that's a very complex question and a completely different podcast and we've all been trying to answer that.
(11:29):
But if there's one immediate case study right now that I think lends some optimism and that is what's happening with revitalizing Chinatown, that collective effort federally provincially the city ourselves, yourself and others, saying, okay, you know what? We need to start taking back this community. It's not going to happen overnight, but it happens when you start to animate and bring life back there. So whether it's light up Chinatown, whether or not it's the awning replacement program that's going on right now, whether or not it's clean up my city block program, all of those things in combination plus significant investment in housing reopening restaurants, that completely changes the atmosphere and the narrative of something that's so important to our city that I think that if we can do that successful, that's actually going to create some momentum around safety and cleanliness in other parts of the city, respecting that there are challenges there that are complex to solve, but what a great vision and case study for restoring confidence in community.
Bridgitte Anderson (12:28):
Yeah, I couldn't amplify that enough. The US ambassador to Canada, David Cohen was here recently and talking about how other representatives from other Chinatowns around in North America came and met with Carol Lee and met with some of the folks in Chinatown just to have a discussion about what we are doing here and learned from what other Chinatowns are doing in North America as well, particularly because of the anti-Asian racism that was very prevalent during the pandemic. So it is great to see that sort of revitalization of a really important part of our downtown community. So when we go back to some of the other challenges that we're trying to solve, another one that comes to mind that I've heard a lot about and your organization has been leading the charge on that is kind of a basic question, do we have enough hotels to house the people who are coming here?
Royce Chwin (13:20):
You completely read my mind and I was explain to that point next because what I was going to tie to health and safety is actually policy and development policy where we can speed up the development of accommodations because we are not right sized for accommodations in Vancouver. And quite frankly, we have the ability to pull in these global events. We're not right sized. We're net negative 2000 rooms down from 2010 when we should have gone the other direction. We know our peer cities are building hotels and I'm not going to pass any aspersions against the city, throwing them under the buses completely not helpful. We have created a hotel development task force for which the city sits on it, a developer, an architect ourselves. The BC Hotel Association sits on that. And what we are doing is working with the city planning department, particularly in the realm of hotels and understanding what changes to policies and procedure and process can happen to speed up the development, get rid of maybe some of the hurdles and barriers, and also receive new investment interest in a way that we can service it much quickly.
(14:34):
Interestingly, and I think I can say here that there are 15 hotels in the pipeline in various stages of development that's significant for the city. What we need to do is now is to start to remove some of those barriers. So for example, there are some office spaces downtown that we are looking at. Is there a way working with the city to be able to fast track, not give special interest, but fast track those developments to turn them quickly so those properties are driving revenue again, and if they're driving revenue again, what that really means is people are going to those spaces and creating commerce in the surrounding area of the hotel. So now we're driving visitor, now we're driving community down there and what will that do to change the complexion of the particular area of the city where that's happening? That's how policy can tie into the other pieces and create greater economic value.
Bridgitte Anderson (15:24):
How about the changes to the short term rental policy? Is your organization concerned about the impact that that's going to have on some of these big events? And I'm thinking particularly maybe not FIFA quite as much or Gray Cup, but think about those. I think there's three Taylor Swift concerts coming. That's a lot of people coming to town a lot. So are you advocating for changes even on a temporary basis to short-term policy, a short-term rental policy, or is this just sort of something that you think won't have much of an impact?
Royce Chwin (15:57):
That is a great question, and the simple answer is right now we don't know once that policy gets into place May 1st, the degree of impact I think remains unknown until we start actually having some of these events show up. What we understand from a provincial perspective is that, and not to sidetrack off of us, but smaller communities with far less accommodations have a higher degree or percentage of STRs or short rentals, rentals rather than accommodations. Those communities will actually get hit harder. That actually could impact us in an indirect way in that people come to Vancouver as a transit point, hang out and then go to other parts of the province. If that journey can't get connected, it may impact to land somebody here in Vancouver. So that's a consideration for Vancouver specifically as we track the percentage of room nights and revenue coming from short-term rentals from accommodations, that ratio was as high as about 22, 20 3% over the summer. That could drop down to about 15 to 12%. I don't know that it will significantly impact, but it still remains to be seen. There may be an opportunity for one very special exemption, and that might be FIFA to say for three months there is an opportunity to open up homes under a very different short-term policy idea and then it shuts it down because the other side that we need to service is places for people to live and workers and so on and so forth. Affordable, affordable housing and whatever shape it might take.
Bridgitte Anderson (17:37):
And going to workers, do we have enough workers in hospitality and tourism right now to handle the influx that's coming? I know we saw quite a bit of a decline in the numbers in the industry over covid, and from my understanding, you would know better than me, but many of those people haven't returned. They've moved on to other careers.
Royce Chwin (17:55):
We've had an interesting transference of labor. We lost a lot of people during the pandemic, some people came back. But attracting labor is not one of the things that I'm hearing as a top priority from operators these days. In fact, in some cases, some operators are telling me that they've got a wealth of resumes sitting on their desk and now they're sorting through and picking through the level of tout. And that's a great space to be. I don't think we'll ever be at a hundred percent. It is the nature of the industry, but if we can move up that percentage, the better off it can be. And the trajectory seems to be that case.
Bridgitte Anderson (18:29):
And I guess it's also the processes and also the strategy at getting young people interested in the industry. I mean, when you and I were younger of that age, that was often where we started our careers. No matter if you ended up as a doctor or a lawyer, an engineer, you did sort of start in hospitality and tourism. A lot of us did. That doesn't seem to be the case so much anymore. So how are you working with some of those post-secondary providers to try and get that narrative back?
Royce Chwin (18:59):
That's exactly at Capano University or BCIT. We intern students. We do talks. We really try to help the curriculum and the instructors with the storyline of tourism because the storyline has been identified very narrow. I server or I work in a restaurant or I'm a front desk clerk. And when you expand what this world is, this industry of industries, it's surprising the reaction, oh, I could do that. I could be in a destination management organization. I could be an airline, I could be an air service development. I could be a regional operator of some type people that are very surprised at the amount of careers that are available in this industry. We have one fellow who is just given his retirement notice working on our team. He's been with us for 30 years in the business of business events to Vancouver. That's a significant role and that is directly supporting our visitor economy. I think it's education, Bridgitte, that people just narrowly define what we're about.
Bridgitte Anderson (20:04):
And even the way that I just said it a minute ago is I started my career there and I ended up here. But for a lot of people, staying in the industry is a wonderful, rewarding career and a heck of a lot of fun too. And it's just making people understand that
Royce Chwin (20:18):
A thousand percent name a better training ground for people interaction, which we don't seem to have enough positive interaction these days, and our industry is built on that. What we say is we're in the people business. What we happen to do is tourism.
Bridgitte Anderson (20:32):
Yeah, people, business, multiple deadlines, all of the kinds of things that I think make for a great employee of any kind. Wanted to ask you about indigenous tourism. There are organizations who focus on the intersection with destination Vancouver and some of the indigenous Tourism Association or associations because BC and Canada and also operators. I mean, how do you work with them?
Royce Chwin (21:03):
That has been one of the biggest opportunities for the reconstituted destination Vancouver. Whereas there was no specific relationship in the past, and that's certainly not a knock. Maybe it wasn't a focus. I'm not really sure. It just wasn't there. So we signed off on a three year, three year MOU with indigenous tourism bc. That's coming to an end. But we like that because it needs to be an ongoing relationship and not an MOU because culturally it's not about MOUs, it's about trust and partnerships as we've come to learn as Bridgitte. So we're really on that exciting path. Secondly, we are working with them to bring on an indigenous tourism specialist that will specifically focus on the Vancouver region. And why that's important is because there's been little to no development in indigenous tourism experiences specifically for Vancouver. I believe we sit at about five,
(22:00):
Which is woefully low and not representative of this incredible history that should be here culturally around indigenous. So that's the journey that we're on right now. One of the other things that we're doing that is really, really important is a brand review of how we present the brand that is Vancouver to the world. What is glaringly obvious and missing is indigenous in that. So we have been building relationships with the three host nations, the Musqueam, Squamish and Slay LA Tooth Nations to say, how do we walk side by side with you and how do we show that we are a very, very young city on a very ancient land and that this is the best quote that I've heard in a long time and it really drives my fire to do this reconciliation, not reconciliation. And that is help us bring our voice back to the land. And that is what we're trying to do.
Bridgitte Anderson (22:55):
And I think we're seeing that people generally speaking are coming around to the viewpoint that indigenous reconcili action is really what makes us a unique place to visit, a unique place to do business is that it really is our unique value proposition. So having that as part of all considerations and at the table is so hugely important.
Royce Chwin (23:20):
A thousand percent. And at the risk of sounding mercenary, and it's not meant to be, but we're competing for socioeconomic benefits for everybody in our city and we know when we're going after certain events. Invictus games is a great example of that, that our indigenous partners were part of the success of that bit. We know the Olympics, and that was the catalyst that the nations will self-identify that coming together to do that. And so for the Invictus Games, that was an absolute catalyst and we know more and more of that partnership and walking side by side will build and create destination competitiveness for Vancouver to land other events or conferences or what have you.
Bridgitte Anderson (24:02):
Yeah, we hosted an event with those folks and it really is precedent setting and I think a lot of other events can learn from that. I wanted to go back to something you were talking about a visitor economy, because we've talked a lot about sort of the major events in sports and culture, but we can't forget about that sort of visitor economy, business economy because conferences fall into that too, and we're chasing some pretty big fish right now, right?
Royce Chwin (24:28):
Absolutely. I don't think what people realize the value of what we call business events or a business conference and some terminology that gets thrown around a little bit, and it's important here is something called the citywide, and that's a minimum of 1000 out of town attendees. So basically if somebody's coming in from out of country that is pure new export revenue into our city, that's why it's so valuable. So that's just the basic mercenary dollars transacting, but more importantly, where destinations are leaning into. And I'm pleased to say that Destination Vancouver has been a little bit of a pioneer in this space, and that is to understand and qualify the legacy impacts of a business event in our community. So it's one thing to show up for three days and spend in restaurants and have a bunch of great interactions. It's another thing to understand what legacy that conference left in the destination, whether it is through additional investments hiring, bringing business here, helping disadvantaged youth integration or working with our indigenous partners. And that's the work that we've done some initial study on trying to qualify and understand how it impacts the destination. More of the conferences that we're working on now recognize again, their economic impact, but they also feel a greater responsibility for legacy impact in a community. It's not a one and done. And Vancouver's done a great job of positioning itself in that regard. I can tell you last year was a record year for City-wides in Vancouver with over 30, and this year we will be in a record year again for city-wides coming to Vancouver.
Bridgitte Anderson (26:09):
That's great. And the one that we are chasing right now, and hopefully we'll have some news on, is the big tech focused conference called Collision. I know Vancouver's bidding on that, and I know you've been doing a ton of work, but that's going to be a pretty big game changer for Vancouver. Bring a lot of people to the city.
Royce Chwin (26:28):
A hundred percent. One of the things that I heard, what I got here was what is that game changing kind of conference that we could get to Vancouver, similar to South by Southwest? Is there a thing? There's an idea that we needed a big event. It's been identified for a while. The collision opportunity, should we be able to land that we believe represents that opportunity? Not only because of the immediate impact that it has with tech, but because that conference in its design is more than tech, it's also culture. So if we can think more broadly about how it can impact the city and take advantage of the cultural base that we have here, obviously the tech community, we think that could be the event that would anchor the first half of the year that really invites the world into Vancouver.
Bridgitte Anderson (27:12):
And that really sort of sums up our whole conversation about the visitor economy. So with one last question, maybe this is the toughest question for you. It's the $64,000 question. Are we ready for all of these events that are coming to town?
Royce Chwin (27:27):
This is a city that is built for hosting and we've proven it time and time again, and we will be ready and we are ready. If we weren't, I would hazard a guess that these events would not have come to Vancouver and we won them because of a team Vancouver approach.
Bridgitte Anderson (27:44):
So I fibbed maybe I have one last question. Okay, we're ready. And are we going to make sure that we're going to be able to really build on this momentum and leverage these in a legacy kind of way?
Royce Chwin (27:58):
I am choosing to be the optimist
(28:02):
And I would say yes and that I think that's a nice statement. I know that. But look at the opportunity in front of us. Going back to our earlier conversation. Not every destination gets this, these opportunities, they just don't. The track record is there. We're doing that. It's incumbent upon us business leaders to get out there and challenge ourselves and say, what are we going to do to take advantage of these opportunities? What statement do we want to make? How do we put Vancouver in that upper echelon of global cities that knows how to host, that knows how to deliver, and that creates a track record for future events to come to the city, to want to come to the city.
Bridgitte Anderson (28:41):
Lasting economic impact, right? Royce
Royce Chwin (28:45):
Legacy impact. Legacy impact that propels us forward. You better believe it.
Bridgitte Anderson (28:50):
All right. Well that is a great place to end the conversation Roy Schwinn, thanks so much.
Royce Chwin (28:55):
Thank you very much for having me. It's a great conversation.