Bruce DeMond is owner of Advanced Systems, a Halifax firm that primarily provides sound and multi-media equipment for conferences and meetings. He says he has annual sales of about a million dollars a year, and has a small staff. But lately he has had a harder time getting jobs at the World Trade and Convention Centre.
Most convention facilities, like those at hotels or the Cunard Centre, have a preferred vendor policy. The facility directs organizations holding conventions to the preferred vendor, and that company in turn kicks back a percentage of sales to the facility. DeMond doesn’t object to the arrangement that private companies make with each other, but says that because TCL is a publicly owned company, it should have less exclusive arrangements.
“Trade Centre Limited,” reads the company’s mission statement, “creates economic and community benefits by bringing people together in Halifax and Nova Scotia.” Yet, says DeMond, in terms of the preferred vendor policy, those economic benefits are going to national firms, squeezing local firms out of the market. TCL has three preferred vendor: Frischkorn Audio Visual, with head offices in Ottawa, Global Convention Services, a Saint John-based company that produces trade displays, and Ticket Atlantic, which is owned by TCL itself.
Frischkorn won the tender to be TCL’s preferred vendor about a year and a half ago, says DeMond. He says previously, he had no trouble getting work at WTCC, as local companies liked dealing with a local vendor. Previously, the preferred vendor gave TCL 30 percent of sales revenue, but DeMond thinks Frischkorn won the tender by offering a 50 percent kickback.
To gain that large kick-back, TCL now does something it didn’t do before: it charges conference organizers who don’t use the preferred vendor. If an organizer uses DeMond instead of Frischkorn, the organizer is charged $600/day for use of the WTCC ballroom, and $400/day for use of the smaller meeting rooms. Those charges effectively make it impossible for small companies to compete, says DeMond.
