BEGGARS, DRUG DEALERS KILL CONVENTION

Vancouver's Safe Reputation Damaged As Tourists Feel Threatened By
Pushy Panhandlers

Aggressive panhandlers and drug dealers are damaging Vancouver's
international reputation as a safe tourist destination, the leaders
of the city's $10-billion tourism industry warn.

The situation has become so dire that beggars have even been
propositioning tourists and dealing drugs inside the gilded bathrooms
of the landmark Fairmont Hotel Vancouver.

Distressed by their experiences in dealing with pushy panhandlers
upon arriving in the city, convention planners are now choosing to
take their business elsewhere, said the general manager of Hotel Vancouver.

The situation is the same in Victoria, where the Fairmont Hotel chain
said it lost at least $200,000 in business after a U.S. convention
cancelled plans for an event at its Empress Hotel.

The Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association estimates
Vancouver hotels have lost contracts worth $500,000.

Philip Barnes, general manager of the Hotel Vancouver, said guests
regularly tell him they are "stunned" and "scared" by the panhandling
and aggressive behaviour on the streets near the hotel at night.

"I've lived on four continents and in six countries, including two
cities known at the time for their crime rates: New York and
Houston," said Barnes. "The problem is more acute in this city now. I
never went through the aggressive panhandling and the drug activities
in New York in the 1980s as I see here now."

The warnings about Vancouver's eroding reputation come a month after
The Economist, an internationally read and respected magazine that
has in the past praised Vancouver, wrote about the city's troubled
downtown core as B.C. prepares for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

To protect his guests, Barnes has spent $60,000 to upgrade hotel
security systems and increase outdoor lighting.

"We've had to take steps now we don't believe we should have to
take," Barnes said. "We lock the public bathrooms [in the hotel] at
night because we've had people sleep in them or do drug deals in them."

Hotel Vancouver employees patrolling the hotel's exterior now only
approach panhandlers in pairs because of the violent responses
they've had in the past.

"It's not just a matter of asking, 'Excuse me, would you mind moving
on?' " Barnes said. "Often these people are very aggressive, very unpleasant."

And they are not only targeting hotels. Rick Antonson, president and
CEO of Tourism Vancouver, said beggars know cruise ship schedules and
arrive specifically to target passengers.

"Cruise ship passengers arrive and this is their first impression --
panhandling," Antonson said. "It's a strong impression; it gets in
the way of tourists wanting to stay in Vancouver, and it's slowly
eroding Vancouver's reputation as a safe travel destination."

Antonson thinks Vancouver's spotless reputation has started to
tarnish and will soon be history if nothing is done to address the situation.

"If Vancouver is not careful, within a year or two we can lose our
international reputation," he said. "When you see [aggressive
panhandling] in an article about Vancouver as something to watch out
for, that's not a good thing at all."

Vancouver residents are used to being asked for money at every
downtown corner, and hoteliers have been dealing with beggars and
drug activity around their grounds for some time.

But Barnes said people have been reluctant to talk about panhandling
as a problem for fear of being seen as oppressing the poor.

"No one wants to be accused of being the bad guy," he said. "This is
not about the poor, about people on the street because of mental
illness or other legitimate reasons."

Antonson agreed people in Vancouver tend to "tiptoe around the issue."

"You don't like to have the terms crime and tourism in the same
phrase," he said. "But people are deceiving themselves when they say
it's not an issue."

Antonson recounted his experience on Tuesday night taking two senior
meeting planners from Chicago -- each arranging large conferences --
to dinner in Yaletown.

"We weren't even out of the vehicle before one of them was accosted,"
he said. "And I mean accosted: the guy was six inches from this man's
face. When the other man got out he was shouted at as well.

"This is not an isolated incident and it's now something people see
as a Vancouver occurrence."

Rae Ackerman, director of Vancouver Civic Theatres, said he is
constantly dealing with beggars who target theatre-goers.

"They are clever -- they figure out what time the show lets out and
catch the audience leaving," he said. "The situation has at times
been a bit grim."

Ackerman said he's hired extra security attendants for the Orpheum
and the Queen Elizabeth Theatre to "run interference with panhandlers
when there's harassment."

"The whole thing -- it wears you down," he said.

Mayor Sam Sullivan said he is all too aware of the problem.

"I've been saying the same thing for the last four years," he said.
"It's one of the complaints I had about the last council -- there was
very little interest in the issue of street disorder.

"It takes some time to turn the ship around."

Because most of the people causing trouble in downtown Vancouver are
those with drug addictions, said Sullivan, the backbone of his
approach to the problem is innovative approaches to drug addiction.

"We know drug maintenance programs have worked fabulously in other
jurisdictions to significantly reduce crime and street disorder,"
Sullivan said. He added that the community court and more housing for
the "hard to house" are also essential.

Sullivan said he will roll out the city's new approach to street
crime in the fall.