The Rhode Island Spring Flower & Garden Show is annually the most-attended public event held at the R.I. Convention Center. With this year’s cancellation of Boston’s New England Spring Flower Show, the Rhode Island event’s organizers are hoping that they’ll see even bigger crowds than usual.
The show, scheduled for Feb. 19 to Feb. 22, has been a revenue driver for the convention center since its 1993 opening, R.I. Convention Center Authority General Manager Tim Muldoon said last week.
“We’ve made strong revenue numbers with it,” he said. “It’s one of the largest revenue shows that we have during the course of the year.”
Much of that revenue comes from parking, concessions and providing electrical and other utilities to vendors, he said.
The Boston show, an annual event put on by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, had been held every spring since 1871. In announcing that the show was canceled, the society said “plans are under way for one or two smaller shows during the spring and early summer season,” but it hasn’t announced yet when those will be held.
The Boston show, according to the society, usually draws about “100,000 winter-weary New Englanders and Boston visitors.”
Now the private Rhode Island show’s coordinator, Providence’s Maury Ryan, is looking to draw the crowd that would have attended that show.
“He’s aggressively reaching out into an expanded market, into the Boston area,” Muldoon said. “He’s reaching out a little more this year because of the void that the Boston show is going to create.”
Show spokeswoman Susan Blicker said the Rhode Island event, with about 200 vendors, usually draws about 30,000 visitors. This year, she said, they’ve estimated that that might grow by about 2 percent.
But that’s a conservative estimate, she acknowledged. “We’re hoping [it will be larger] because so many people go to the Boston show and Providence is just a hop, skip and jump away,” she said.
Tickets for the Providence show are about $17, while tickets for the Boston show, in the past, have been about $20 each.
For the RICCA, which is coming off two consecutive record-revenue years, the event is a chance to stay on par with annual revenue for the fiscal year that ends June 30, Muldoon said. The center’s revenue is down a little, he said, because attendance has been down at many events. With about 300 total events, a few less have been held this fiscal year, also.
“It’s a hugely important show for us in the month of February, which isn’t exactly the peak convention trade show time for the destination,” Muldoon said. “Because of the cold weather, some might pick another location in February, as opposed to Providence.” •
