Games Will Benefit Vancouver Despite Slowdown

He said the scale of the economic benefit would depend on Vancouver's marketing skills and ability to please visitors.

The 2010 Winter Olympics will benefit Vancouver regardless of the global economic slowdown, experts said as the city began the one-year countdown to the Games on Thursday.

"The teams still need to come, their family and support staff will still need to come, the upscale tourists are likely to still come," economist Mike Tretheway told Reuters.

He said the scale of the economic benefit would depend on Vancouver's marketing skills and ability to please visitors.

"Realising the legacy benefits will depend on how effective the tourism destination marketing organisations are at levering free Olympic exposure into future visitors, and whether the press observe good hospitality during their stays around the Olympics," he said.

A 2002 study, which Tretheway's firm InterVISTAS Consulting Inc. helped to prepare, predicted that the Games, which will open on Feb. 12 2010, would provide an economic boost of between C$2 billion ($1.61 billion) and C$4.2 billion depending on the number of visitors during the Games and how many people visited the city later because of the Olympic publicity.

A report on the economic impact of the Games so far is being reviewed by the government and is expected to be released in the next few weeks.

"There is not an economy in the country, or on the continent, that would not like to have the Olympics coming," British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell said last week, citing the Games as a key reason the province expects to return to budget surpluses in three years.

VENUE CONSTRUCTION

Vancouver's economy was red hot until last year when its real estate market slowed. It is still healthier than many North American cities but British Columbia's provincial economy has been hit hard by the commodity markets collapse.

The Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC), which has a C$1.75-billion operating budget not including security and construction costs, was already spending C$3 million a day to prepare for the two-week event, Campbell said.

The Vancouver area has already received some economic benefit from the C$580 million in government-funded sports venue construction, most of which has been completed or will be done in the next few weeks.

The federal and provincial government are also funding highway and infrastructure improvements associated with the Games, putting the total cost to taxpayers at more than C$2.5 billion, according to British Columbia's auditor general.

VANOC say demand for tickets in Canada is much higher than the supply available. Demand in the United States is also very high, according to ticket seller CoSport.

Anti-poverty activists have complained that the Games have already hurt Vancouver's homeless by reducing the amount of affordable housing -- a charge that government officials dispute.

The activists say only rich businesses with sponsorship deals will see any economic stimulus from the Games, and the money would have been better spent addressing problems in areas such as Vancouver's poor Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.