Businesses spending less on Stampede festivities this year
Posted Jun 3, 2015 7:02 am.
Last Updated Jun 3, 2015 7:19 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
With exactly one month until the Calgary Stampede, the party scene is usually getting amped up for the festivities.
However, with the economic slowdown, some companies are tightening things up this year.
While event planners aren’t seeing tumbleweeds roll through their offices, some have seen a significant drop in business.
David Howard, president of the Event Group, says this hasn’t caught him by surprise; many companies who already had deposits down for entertainment and venues started pulling back in November.
“Forty percent of our Stampede business has been cancelled this year corporately and moving forward, their prices and investments have gone down as well,” Howard said.
Stephen Gillette, general manager of An Affair to Remember, says they’ve seen about as many bookings as last year.
“From our end we don’t see a lot of new business, but we seem to have a lot of repeats. Everyone we had last year has seemed to come back to us, which is fantastic,” he said.
Gillette said it caught him as a surprise, but he also admits companies aren’t going for the super extravagant parties they have in the past.
