Saskatoon businesses say Crop Production Week provides a much-needed injection of consumer spending in what is typically a slow month for the city’s retail and hospitality sectors.
This will be the 12th year that the conference portion of the event has been hosted by the Saskatoon Inn.
“For this hotel, it’s an event that we cherish,” said general manager Patty Schweighardt.
The government and corporate worlds don’t fully emerge from holiday mode until the end of January. Crop Production Week, which begins on Jan. 12 this year, will drive the hotel’s revenues for that first month of 2004.
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The conference fills the inn’s 250 rooms and its 28,000 sq. feet of meeting space. Trucks will be parked in nearly every outdoor stall.
“The diesel kind of fills the hotel because of the ventilation system. It’s trucks, all trucks,” said Schweighardt.
She estimates the conference “easily” generates $200,000 in revenue for the Saskatoon Inn. Four or five other hotels in the vicinity also benefit from spillover bookings.
Tourism Saskatoon president Todd Brandt said when all the economic spinoffs are taken into account, the combination of Crop Production Week and the Western Canadian Crop Production Show at Prairieland Exhibition inject an estimated $1.9 million into the city’s economy.
“It would be one of our top 10 events for sure,” said Brandt.
Nobody has a firm grasp on how many farmers travel into Saskatoon for the conference.
Each commodity group tracks its own attendance numbers but the totals can’t simply be added together because many farmers attend multiple sessions, so there is some overlap.
Pulse Days is by far the biggest draw. That event has attracted as many as 1,793 producers, but average attendance is closer to 1,100 participants.
The trade show at the exhibition reports weekly traffic in the 16,000-18,000 range, but again it is not known how many of those are repeat customers.
Brandt used a “modest estimate” of 4,000 unique farmer visitors, an average stay of three days and the typical conference goer daily expenditure of $160, to calculate his $1.9 million total revenue estimate for city businesses.
“That’s why these shows are important,” he said.
Schweighardt said the Saskatoon Inn is one of the only conference centres in the city that can accommodate that many people. She hopes farmers associated with Crop Production Week stay with the hotel for many years to come.
“It’s an amazing group. They’re very warm individuals that have never given us any trouble at all. It’s a hotel dream to have this conference.”
