In a city that often appears to shut down during the summer, Ottawa's festivals are music to the business community's ears.

Between May and September 2003, 21 community events injected $57 million directly into the local economy, according to a study by the Ottawa Tourism and Convention Authority.

Most festival organizers say their attendance and economic-impact figures were up about 10 per cent in 2004 - and this year looks even better.

The festivals also create about 1,200 full-time jobs, more than either Ottawa's convention or travel industries.

Ashley Fraser, Business Edge
Visitors, such as those among this sold-out crowd at the Black Eyed Peas concert, can spend $150 to $230 per person in town.

Ottawa's Tulip Festival and Canada Day draw about half the season's 1.5 million visitors, but it is four music events - and their paid attendance - in July and August that keep the city's hotels, restaurants and bars busy at a time when many residents leave town.

"We don't have a major industrial sector, so Ottawa's tax base is really quite restricted," says Catherine O'Grady, executive producer of the Ottawa Jazz Festival. "The festivals have an amazing spinoff benefit that helps shape the economic landscape of the city."

Together with the Blues Festival, the Folk Festival and the International Chamber Music Festival, Jazzfest helps attract tens of thousands of tourists. Organizers say about 18 per cent of 2004's combined attendance of 381,000 travelled at least 80 kilometres to watch concerts.

Their expenditures - direct purchases of hotel rooms, food and tickets - vary from $150 to $230 per person, according to city figures. That direct financial impact ranges from $10 million to $16 million, money that otherwise might not be spent in the city.

Determining secondary economic effects, or economic activity, is difficult: Fees paid to performers and profits from hotel rooms tend to get shuffled out of the city, whereas restaurant and bar tips can get funnelled through the local economy as many as five times a week. A general rule is that secondary effects are two to three times primary expenditures.

Whatever the formula, the four music festivals pack as much as a $48-million punch for Ottawa's otherwise limp summer economy.

"From an economic viewpoint, we're a small business. We create opportunities for other businesses, like vendors, and we generate a lot of taxes," says Mark Monahan, executive and artistic director of Bluesfest. "Without these events, there'd be a big, quiet hole in downtown Ottawa during the summer."

Bluesfest is the city's biggest paid event. Attendance is more than 200,000 for the 156 shows spread over 11 days from July 7 to 18 on the grounds of City Hall in downtown Ottawa.

The festival operates on a budget of $4.5 million, which Monahan says generates between $9-$10 million in economic activity, including $500,000 worth of onsite food and artisan sales.

Onsite record retailer Compact Music has its best sales month of the year supplying Bluesfest fans. Owner Ian Boyd says he sells online tickets as far away as Seattle and Oslo, Norway, and will move well over 100,000 CDs.

"It's more important to us than Christmas and I think you'd find a lot of others saying the same thing," Boyd says. "These kinds of events can keep some vendors going when the downtimes hit."

Bluesfest is the second-largest blues festival in North America and has some of the biggest headliners in music. Ticket sales prior to the event were up 10 per cent this year, Monahan says, despite competition for entertainment dollars from an unusually heavy slate of summer rock concerts, such as the Rolling Stones, U2 and Bruce Springsteen.

Jazzfest, which this year attracted 90,000 ticketholders from June 23 to July 3, has a budget of $2.2 million. O'Grady does not have specific figures for the event's economic impact, but says a two-times multiplier sounds "about right."

"Studies don't take into account the full ancillary benefits, like money spent by those who don't buy tickets," she says.

Headliner Diana Krall drew a packed house of 5,000 to the festival's site in Confederation Park, adjacent to City Hall, but city police estimated an additional 5,000 watched and listened from streets and walkways outside the site's barriers.

The Chamber Music festival also relies on downtown venues and hit an attendance record of 55,000 last year on a budget of about $2 million. Executive and artistic director Julian Armour says it had an economic impact of about $5 million, making it the largest event of its kind in the world. This year it runs from July 23 to Aug. 6.

"So far this year we're way ahead of last year's sales, which shows we're helping create a world-class art scene here. People in Ottawa can spend their money anywhere, but we're trying to keep them at home," Armour says.

"Our research shows that 45 per cent of those who attend the festival said they would've left the city (on holiday) if (the festival) wasn't on," he says.

"This is the type of success that allows us to get the Borodin String Quartet, from Russia, for their only North American concert," Armour says.

The Folkfest, the lone event of the four to be held outside the downtown core, is staged at Britannia Park on the Ottawa River in the city's western suburbs. Poor weather last year hurt attendance at the August festival, dropping it to about 26,000. The festival runs from Aug. 18 to 21 this year.

Despite the weather, the festival still managed to create about $1 million in spending activity on a budget of $600,000, says president Gene Swimmer.

"We're finding people coming from further and further away, like Syracuse and Rochester, and we're doing more package deals with hotels," he says.

"It's hard to say we're full because of the festivals, but overall our summer packages are selling like hotcakes," says Ann Meelker, director of sales and marketing at downtown stalwart The Lord Elgin Hotel, across from Confederation Park "I think the downtown events have a real influence on us because we're front and centre. Our customer surveys show the festivals make Ottawa a lot more visible, so we link ourselves (through online and offline promotions) to them," Meelker says.

The city's main downtown entertainment area - the Byward Market - also has responded to the influx of thousands of summer visitors. Three new upmarket restaurants have added 600 seats to an existing 2,200 since May in the four-square-block market.

All four music festivals are non-profit organizations and receive city grants ranging from $20,000 to $105,000. Much of that is returned in rents and security costs, and executives are miffed at the municipal government's low support, saying it does not take full marketing advantage of the festivals' reputations.

"We work our butts off producing an incredibly popular product that's a big revenue generator for the city. But it's not our job to take these products and sell them to a wider audience. That's what the city's tourism bureau is for," says Bluesfest's Monahan.

"I think they're missing a huge opportunity by not taking advantage of this and really putting Ottawa on the map," he says.

Tourist officials at the city wouldn't comment on the need to provide marketing help to festival organizers.

(Mike Levin can be reached at levin@businessedge.ca)