Tourism Prince George ran an operational surplus of $170,415 in 2024, representatives from the organization told the city’s Standing Committee on Finance and Audit at its Wednesday, May 7 meeting.
CEO Colin Carson and Lorna Wendling of accounting firm MNP presented the not-for-profit organization’s year-end financial statements for 2024 at the meeting.
As of Dec. 31, 2024, Tourism Prince George had around $2.9 million in assets and $696,889 in liabilities. That’s up from around $2.28 million in assets and $216,463 in liabilities in 2023.
Wendling noted that the value of TPG’s restricted investments decreased from just over $1.2 million in 2023 to $920,879 in 2024.
“That was because there was a cash withdrawal from those investments to support the move from the tourism centre to its new location in the Civic Centre,” Wendling said.
“You’ll also see a significant increase in tangible capital assets from $43,000 to $901,000 and that’s a combination of additions to the leasehold improvements to get the new tourism centre ready for occupation, work that was done on the skating rink and the acquisition of the containers for the container market.”
Last year, the organization moved into a shipping container at Canada Games Plaza while their new digs inside the Civic Centre were being made ready. They made the move inside the building this January.
A synthetic material was also installed in the plaza’s skating rink to allow visitors to use it year-round, instead of just during the colder months.
A slideshow prepared by MNP noted that developing the container market in the plaza cost around $369,000 while the organization spent around $500,000 for leasehold improvements.
Offsetting some of those costs were around $421,000 in grants.
The container market was not finished being assembled when the financial statements were prepared and so the cost of paying off related debts has not been included in the 2024 budget.
In terms of revenues, TPG saw a drop of around 6.5 per cent in hotel room tax grant from around $1.94 million in 2023 to around $1.81 million in 2024.
Coun. Trudy Klassen asked whether that drop could be attributed to 2024 being the first year where short-term rentals were not allowed in unattached units within the city.
Carson said there wasn’t a significant decrease from revenues from online accommodations platforms in 2024. Rather, he theorized that 2023’s figures were higher than normal because of pent-up demand for events that had been cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I would say that 2024 was probably a close to normal year and kind of plateaued out where 2023 was truthfully better than expected,” Carson said. “That’s something we saw across the province, not only here in Prince George.”
Following up, Klassen asked how well TPG can access its visitor’s centre when events are on.
Carson praised the organization’s relationship with Andy Beesley, the city’s director of civic facilities and said the centre being open has been considered as adding value to conference being held at the Civic Centre.
“I know we want to have that, so going forward unless there is a specific event that cannot have us open for security reasons or if it’s an extremely private event where that can happen, those should be the only times those doors are closed,” Carson said.
With the 2025 Special Olympics BC Summer Games coming to Prince George this July and the city submitted a bid to host the national games in 2030, Coun. Ron Polillo asked if there was anything TPG could share about collaborations with those events.
“Nothing that I can share with you now, although I think there will be some announcements in the next month or two about some pretty significant and special events that will be coming to Prince George in the near future.”,” Carson said.
