Toronto may not have won the 2008 Summer Games, but the city one something else—visibility.
Alan Siegel, chief executive of Siegelgale, a New York-based global branding firm, said Toronto’s image got a boost from international media covering the bid, just for being in the running.
He said, “building a reputation as a tourist or business destination takes time. This kind of exposure is very important in terms of doing that”.
According to TO-Bid officials, about 80 journalists, photographers and technicians from 20 international media outets, including BBC and CNN, were in Toronto this week preparing for yesterday’s announcement.
Siegel said, “Toronto is an extraordinary place, so I have to believe the experiences the media had and their reporting were very favourable”.
Brenda Librecz, managing director for the city’s economic development division, said that the bid process is already paying dividends by attracting potential business investment to Toronto. She said the number of potential investments in the city is up about 20 per cent from last year.
“We are being put on short lists we weren’t on before. Now all of a sudden we are being included”.
Librecz said the next initiative to keep the momentum going is to have all the contributors to the Olympic bid become ambassadors for Toronto, and get them on the road to continue the job of selling Toronto.
The bid provided the catalyst to get all three levels of government to agree that Toronto needs major capital investments, particularly to develop the waterfont and upgrade transportation facilities, said Louise Verity, director of policy at the Toronto Board of Trade.
Verity said the local economy should also benefit from increased tourism that global exposure from the bid generated.
And a spokesperson for Tourism Toronto said news coverage has a much greater impact on people’s minds than advertising. “We have been front and centre all over the world’.
The bond rating agency Standard & Poor’s left the city’s debt rating unchanged after the failed bid, noting that failure to host the Games don’t affect the outlook for Toronto.
Thomas Connell of Standard & Poor’s said there are now fewer worries that the city will get into borrowing trouble.
