INFLATING BOTTOM LINE
Show-stopping giant duck gave waterfront businesses a boost over Canada Day long weekend,
Toronto’s notorious duck has floated away, but not before inflating the city’s bottom line.
Waterfront businesses say this Canada Day long weekend was their busiest. And the duck is to thank.
“It was definitely the busiest Canada Day long weekend we’d ever seen,” said Trevor Brodie, Amsterdam BrewHouse’s director of operations. “Everyone was coming down to see the duck, so it’s1-0 for the duck, I think.”
Brodie said everyone who showed up at Amsterdam asked the same question: “Where’s the duck?”
“It was definitely a busy week for everyone down here. Everybody on the patios got up and was taking selfies. They were loving it,” Brodie said.
Redpath Waterfront Festival organizers say they cleared half a million visitors on the first day, smashing previous three-day records.
Lea Parrell, the festival’s co-producer, expects 2017’s economic impact study to far exceed the $4.2 million they helped generate from nonlocal tourists in 2015.
She said the Radisson Hotel’s Starbucks had to close on Saturday after selling out.
“I have been in this business a long time and I have never, ever seen crowds like that,” she said. “You couldn’t move. It was unbelievable.”
The city’s water taxis, struggling this summer due to the island’s closure, got a boost.
“Massive duck made a massive lineup,” said Tiki Taxi’s Luc Cote. “It was easily three times the amount of business we would have had.”
While most Canada Day long week- ends only provide the water taxis a boost on July 1, Cote says he had his full fleet running 30-minute trips onto the water for all three days.
“We were actually busier on the holiday Monday than we were on Canada Day,” he said. “It compensated for the island being closed, that’s for sure. We actually really, really needed something like the duck to get people out on the water.”
Eleanor McMahon, Ontario’s minister of tourism, culture and sport, said in a statement that the duck was a success.
“The crowds lining up to see the duck and the economic boost for local economies indicates that our investments are effective and critically important for our tourism sector.”
Parrell says the duck was money well spent, and that after a $21,000 (U.S.) rental fee, all of the Redpath festival’s $121,325 grant went to marketing, fencing, a crane, a tugboat and security they needed anyway. The local businesses agree. “It was massively busy down here and it was people coming to see the duck,” Cote said.