SARSstock failed city financially

Toronto's hospitality and tourism industry claims concert did not draw in visitors

Although concert organizers have deemed it a major success, the city's hospitality and tourism industry is still in turmoil, a Toronto hotel official says.
Linda Sands, marketing director for Toronto's Sheraton Four Points Hotel, said last week's SARS benefit concert did not draw in the huge numbers of visitors they had initially hoped for.
"I would say the concert didn't have the effect [organizers] wanted it to," she said. "We are just devastated at the lack of reservations made."
More than a week has passed since rock and roll icon Mick Jagger declared to the world that "Toronto is back and booming".
On July 30, close to half a million spectators converged onto Downsview Park in the hope of boosting the city's profile on the international scene.
However, in the aftermath, only time will determine how quickly the record-breaking spectacle will turn things around for our ailing city.
Confident of the impact of the mega-concert on Toronto's tourism trade were event co-organizers Senator Gerry Grafstein and Liberal MP Dennis Mills.
"We are very happy with how things have unfolded," Mills said. "We have given the world a message that SARS is in the past and Toronto is open again for business."
The concert was the "dream child" so to speak of both Mills and Grafstein who organized it in an attempt to add a jolt to the city's SARS inflicted economy.
The desired effect of the concert took full force the following day, as television networks and dailies spread the news around the world. Coverage of the event was reported in many American newspapers including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune.
The concert, or "SARS-STOCK" as it was appropriately named, is the largest ticketed music concert ever to be held in North America. In all more than 475,000 tickets had been sold for the show, 50,000 of which were purchased in the United States.
The money made from the benefit concert will be donated to a relief fund for workers impacted by lost revenue. However, Sands said, in all, a mere 59 rooms were booked for people traveling to the Rolling Stones concert, a number much lower than initially anticipated.
This is a far cry from the initial impression given by tourism officials.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail published August 1, president of Toronto Tourism Bruce MacMillan said hotel reservations were back up to where they were before SARS cost millions of dollars to the city's hotel and restaurant industry.
MacMillan said that in the few days leading up to the concert, the call centre responsible for hotel bookings reached more than 1,000 calls a day. This is a vast improvement from just 200 calls per day in the last four months.
Sands added that in light of the negative outcome, events such as Caribana provided a good indication of what the mega-concert had in store for hotels in the city.
"Our hotel is traditionally booked out during Caribana," she said. "We usually do very well but we didn't see any of the old traffic."
This week organizers of Caribana, an event that traditionally draws in close to one million spectators annually, reported the number of foreign visitors to the city was much lower this time around.
But Sands said although there is no immediate benefits for Toronto businesses, the wheels are definitely in motion.
"We haven't noticed anything yet but this is not to say that things haven't started to happen," she continued. "Perhaps in the long term we'll see the attributes of this concert."
Sands attributed the lack of visitors to the city to much more than just the epidemic that inflicted 250 people and eventually killed 42.
In fact, she said, the lack of American travelers to the city could be somewhat political in nature. She added that tarnished relations between Canada and the United States could have had an influence on the number of tourists coming to Toronto.
Sands noted that potential visitors had been canceling their reservations since early spring, months before the concert was announced.
As a result of SARS or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the city's tourism and hospitality industry has suffered a significant blow financially.
Both the Federal and Provincial governments have pledged money to help curb the economic damaged incurred by businesses.
To date, it has been estimated that close to 2,000 tourism and hospitality workers have lost their jobs since the epidemic was reported last spring.
Sands said it would take years before the tourism industry fully makes a recovery from the negative effects of SARS.
"It's just a feeling in the industry. It will take at least two years to recoup from all of this," she said. "Businesses will just have to be more innovative in drawing people back to the city."

Publication Date: 2003-08-10
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3043