Experts question province's estimate of 6M annual visitors to revamped Ontario Place

The province says it expects the revitalized Ontario Place to attract more annual visitors than the CN Tower and Empire State Building combined, a estimation that some experts are questioning.

On Thursday, the province revealed it expects 6 million visitors annually at the site, which includes the waterpark and spa being developed by Therme Canada, a concert venue, the new science centre, a new marina and public park land. The estimation was made public when the province revealed its lease with Therme.

By comparison, the CN Tower sees about 1.8 million visitors a year and the Empire State Building 2.5 million. The six million visitor figure would putOntario Place closer to Eiffel Tower-level tourism, which sees just under seven million visitors a year.

"Ontario Place is politically a hot buttona more rosy projection probably is helping in that respect," said Wayne Smith, director of the Institute for Hospitality and Tourism Research at Toronto Metropolitan University.

"But you know when you take a look at that and, we did the numbers, six million guests a year would be almost 16,500 people a day. That's a lot of people."

Annual attendance dropped from 2.5 million when Ontario Place was built,to about 300,000 visitors at the time of its closure in 2012.

Subject-matter experts consulted, province says

Michael Lindsay, CEO of Infrastructure Ontario, told reporters Thursday that the estimation was made in consultation with subject-matter experts. He said whatever the number turns out to be, it will be much higher than the amount of visitors the site has seen for the last decade.

It's unclear how many of those visitors the province expects will be people staying overnight in the city. The ministry of infrastructure did not directly respond when asked how the number was reached.

If the six-million figure is to be reached by attracting overnight visitors, it's a tall order. Smith said the city sees about nine million overnight visitors a year, whichmeans 66 per cent of people who visit the city overnight would need to go to Ontario Place.

"It seems very optimistic, perhaps overly so," he said of the estimation.

David Soberman, a professor of marketing at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, said Ontario Place will primarily be attracting visitors from within the Greater Toronto Area.

He said there are water parks all over the place, so it's unlikely people would travel to one from the United States or overseas.

"It's not particularly unique. That doesn't mean it's not fun, but it's not like Niagara Falls or the Quebec Citadel or the CN Tower," Soberman said.

The City of Niagara Falls welcomes about 12 million visitors a year, double the expected Ontario Place numbers.

"To sort of suggest [Ontario Place] would pull in 50 per cent of one of the world's wonders is just, I think, a little over the top," Soberman said.

He said with a prime piece of land like Ontario Place, there would have been various ideas for redeveloping the area and everyone with an idea wants it to sound as positive as possible.

He said the numbers would have been developed by using already existing data from previous tourism studies, as well as by surveying people that would be the target market for the site. The survey would look at whether they have interest in going and how frequently they might visit, he said.

"Maybe they're including every car that drives along the Gardiner Expressway as having visited it. I don't know how they came up with that number," he said.

"I know I'm being a bit sardonic, but I mean, it just seems a bit unrealistic to me."