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Glimpse the future of the meeting business through today’s state-of-the-art venues

by Malwina Gudowska

“Budgets are not what they used to be,” says Heather Hornoi, economic development officer for the City of Kimberley. “If you have one conference a year instead of four, you need that value in the meeting space.” With the new 24,000-square-foot Kimberley Conference and Athlete Training Centre, slated to open this September, the town in British Columbia’s East Kootenay region is hoping to attract companies looking for a first-class space for trade shows, conferences and other events, with the added mountain lifestyle features offered in the surrounding area.

“Kimberley has world-class recreation facilities right here,” boasts Hornoi. “Most conferences have pre-and-post activities, and we’re known for our golf courses…. We want to take that reputation and expand it to a first-class business destination.”

In keeping with meeting organizers’ demands, Kimberley’s conference centre will offer them options in how green they want to go, from declining tablecloths or water pitchers to incorporating carbon-offsetting measures. The centre will accommodate a 350-person banquet-style seated dinner or a 500-person theatre-style seated event with four break-out rooms and advanced audiovisual capabilities.

While the conference centre will be housed on the bottom floor, a training centre for nordic, alpine, curling and sledge hockey athletes will take up the main floor, in addition to an aquatic centre. “The facilities complement each other,” says Hornoi. Athletes could train while at the same time holding awards ceremonies, for example, while companies could use the facilities for team-building exercises. “Put your work team on sledges (small sleds with blades used by Paralympic hockey athletes) and see what team can get from one side to the other with support from their group,” says Hornoi. “It’s about building that camaraderie.”

On Dec. 1, 2009, the new Edmonton Exposition and Conference Centre, Northlands opened to a flurry of holiday activity. “It was the Christmas catering season and all of our halls were in full use,” says Leanne Smoliak, director of sales at Northlands.

Rewind more than three years ago and you’ll find Smoliak and her team surveying clients and prospective clients while visiting other facilities that had recently undergone major facelifts in order to discover what they liked and wanted to incorporate into the new space. “The trend in the business is the trade and consumer shows,” says Smoliak. “But it’s also offering that conference element.” Formerly known as the AgriCom, the old space didn’t have conference rooms and couldn’t provide clients with a more intimate space for educational sessions, for example.

The largest exhibition facility west of Toronto, the Edmonton Expo Centre has the capacity to host 25,000 visitors at once and includes four new exhibit halls, conference and catering services, with a 17,000-square-foot kitchen and a 13,000-square-foot ballroom. The exhibition halls are connected by gallery space. Having everything under one roof means there are centrally located services and the centre can guarantee clients, such as the Edmonton Motor Show, the RV Show and the Alberta Gift Show, that every exhibitor will see every person that walks in.

With added loading docks, drive-in spaces, staging areas and features for managing shows from the back, the centre is also more user-friendly. But its design is still “urban chic” says Smoliak. The large windows and curtain-wall glass offer a big visual impact but also allow for plenty of natural light, meaning minimal artificial lighting is used throughout the day. The existing space will be retrofitted, working around this year’s events, so there will be a continuous flow between the old and the new.

March 2010 Contents

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