FRANCES BULA VANCOUVER — Special to The Globe and Mail Published on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009 12:00AM EST Last updated on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009 4:09AM EST

Attention, all business leaders: If you're seriously interested in moving your operations to Vancouver, you could be in line for an almost-all-expenses-paid trip to the region during the Olympics, complete with Games tickets. A group of Lower Mainland municipalities has banded together to bring in 100 people from 50 companies during the Games in February, in the hopes of wooing them to settle here permanently.

The cost: $1.5-million to cover meals, hotels, local transpo use rtation and Olympics tickets for 100 visitors for four days. (They have to cover their own airfares.) The long-term value: Well, no one can quite say, but they're pretty sure it will pay off somehow.

"This is the most powerful opportunity this region will have to brand itself," Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said as he helped announce the initiative yesterday along with Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts and Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie.

"Other cities competing with us are well-armed with resources," the mayor said. "However, they don't have the 2010 Games." And so the cities are using that advantage to pitch their best case. The three are part of a nine-city consortium called Metro Vancouver Commerce (subtitle: Powerhouse Paradise) that formed three years ago to co-operate in enticing businesses they think would be interested to come to this region - businesses that they might otherwise have to spend much more money courting in expensive trade missions. "We're jumping on this with great gusto," Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart said. "With a population of 125,000, it's hard for us to go around the world." So his municipality is happy to throw in some money and any Games tickets it might have available to entertain visiting business leaders. (The federal government is putting in $800,000 through its Western Economic Diversification Department.) Mr. Stewart hopes Coquitlam could attract "clean-technology" businesses like wind power or alternative energy.

As well, he hopes that information and communications companies will be interested in the unique QNet fibre-optic system that the city paid to install. Ms. Watts is aiming at manufacturing, media, gaming and technology companies for Surrey. And Mr. Robertson said Vancouver is focusing on clean-technology and renewable-energy companies, along with venture-finance operations, especially for green businesses.

Potential invitees are being carefully screened, they said, to ensure that they are really interested in Vancouver, and not just an Olympics freebie. In spite of all the enthusiasm, however, everyone involved admitted that absolutely no hard figures are available on how successful this initiative is likely to be.

Staff from the Vancouver Economic Development Commission, which is helping Metro Vancouver Commerce organize this lure, say that comprehensive figures have never been collected on how many out-of-region businesses came to the Lower Mainland in the past or why, even though the stated focus of provincial and local economic strategies is almost always on how to make the region more attractive to outside investors. "We don't really know how many companies move in at any time," said John Tylee, communications director at the commission. "There is such a tremendous amount of churn. And it depends on their growth. One small technology company that moves in can grow from 10 people to 200 in a few years." Mr. Robertson said the goal is to have 25 of the 50 invited companies move here. But he couldn't quantify in any way what the value of the businesses might be. Lee Malleau, the director of Metro Vancouver Commerce, said one of the benefits of the program is that her team will actually do some analysis of the results.

"This is going to be the business legacy for the region." In the meantime, it looks as though the program is popular. Ms. Malleau's first round of invitations have had a 90-per-cent acceptance rate.

[Source]