A year ago, Tourism Vancouver's annual meeting was rocked by suggestions the city's $883.6-million convention centre project could become a white elephant attracting few big conventions.

What a difference a year makes.

Tourism Vancouver officials told the 2008 annual meeting Tuesday the expanded convention centre has already attracted enough new business to make 2011 the best year ever for city convention bookings.

"We are thrilled with the range and extent of new convention bookings for the expanded convention centre, " outgoing Tourism Vancouver chair Smith Munro told the meeting.

" . . . The [convention centre] expansion is on its way to being the busiest meeting place in all of Canada. The coming decade will see Vancouver as the world's gathering place, time and again."

Major conventions booked for the expanded facility in 2011 include the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and the Risk and Insurance Management Society.

Tourism Vancouver says confirmed bookings in 2011, combined with those it is still bidding for, could attract 120,000 delegates and 300,000 room nights in 2011.

Incoming Tourism Vancouver chair Geoffrey Howes told the meeting Vancouver has made a short list of four potential hosts for an unnamed "mammoth" convention in 2020 that would attract more than 50,000 delegates and create an economic impact of $57.7 million. The winning bid will be announced later this year.

The upbeat discussion contrasts to remarks made at the meeting last year, when Fairmont Hotels & Resorts regional vice-president Phil Barnes said lacklustre bookings threatened to make the new centre "the biggest empty ballroom in town."

The expanded convention centre will triple the amount of meeting space at the Canada Place facility when it opens in March 2009. It will be used as the international broadcast centre for the 2010 Olympics.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008