'The UK is our biggest international market'
Paul Harvey catches up with Mayor of Ottawa Mark Sutcliffe to find out what the Canadian capital has to offer for business events.
Mayor of Ottawa Mark Sutcliffe’s recent trade trip to Europe saw the Canadian capital host more than 150 UK event professionals and travel trade experts in London, highlighting everything the city has to offer.
The trip also saw Ottawa Tourism and The Hague & Partners Convention Bureau renew their Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which exists to identify and win business events that are strategically aligned.
The mayoral visit underlines Ottawa’s strong ties and commitment to the European business events and travel sector. I caught up with Sutcliffe to find out more…
Mayor of Ottawa Mark Sutcliffe
Mayor of Ottawa Mark Sutcliffe
Paul Harvey: You're on a mayoral mission to Europe - what are your objectives?
MS: Ottawa is one of the best kept secrets internationally. It's an amazing destination and we have a wonderful convention centre and a wonderful tourism team and we're trying to do more to promote what we have - natural beauty, event space, amenities, museums, cultural attractions.
We thought it was important to connect with a bunch of different people, we're meeting a lot of event organisers, just to showcase what Ottawa has to offer. The UK is our biggest international market.
PH: What's your role with business events in Ottawa?
MS: I support what the team at Ottawa Tourism and the Shaw Center are doing. They have a list of events that they're going after and as much as possible, I support that.
We also create the right environment that events can be accessible. It's not like having an event in New York City where there'll be 20 other events going on at the same time. If you're having an event in Ottawa we make sure it's a big deal and you'll have the whole town to yourself for a few days. There's so many great ways to enjoy the city when you're there.
PH: How has Ottawa’s role on the world stage in terms of business events changed in recent years?
MS: Ottawa has changed a lot in the last 10 or 20 years. It's the capital of Canada and has been for a long time, but it's now also a thriving technology community. A lot of high-tech events happen in Ottawa. There’s a lot of growth and investment, plus we have much more exciting restaurant and nightlife scenes. So there's more to do around events in Ottawa. We have a lot of sports activity going on ice hockey, soccer, basketball - there's just so much going on in the city that wasn't there 20 or 30 years ago.
When my dad came to Canada the population bottle was probably about 250k - now it’s 1.1 million. It's a much more cosmopolitan city than it was a while ago. It's not the city I grew up in - it's much more exciting and vibrant and multicultural.
PH: What major events have you got coming up in the city?
MS: On the sports side we've been attracting a lot of national and international events - we hosted the World Men's Curling Championships recently which was exciting. We're about to host the World Junior Ice Hockey Championships. It's a huge thing in Canada. And we just announced that we're going to have an Ironman Triathlon downtown, which is really cool.
A large conference we're currently hosting is the UN Summit on Plastic Pollution - we have 4,200 delegates in the city for a week, with 130 media and 180 countries. We're doing a lot on the international stage. It's growing every year and so is our investment in the UK and other European destinations. So we're seeing a lot of great things happen.
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