The Vancouver tourist trade is in full swing -- and out-of-towners are on the move, enjoying our region's rich assortment of parks, parades and panhandler encounters.

Along with the tour bus crowds and cruiseship passengers, convention goers are a huge part of this visitor influx, pumping serious bucks into the B.C. economy.

Remember when the Shriners held their annual get-together a few summers back? In addition to the upswing in shopping and dining, downtown was awash with colourful hats and clowns, bringing smiles to the faces of many.

But British Columbians aren't so amused with the convention industry as a whole these days. Word that the price tag to build the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre expansion has soared from $495 million to nearly $900 million is troubling, indeed. And it has some naysayers, such as the

Canadian Taxpayers Federation, treating the huge waterfront development like this summer's blockbuster boondoggle -- on a scale with B.C.'s fast ferries, which continue to waste away on the opposite side of Burrard Inlet.

The ramped-up rhetoric against this massive project, however, is both over-the-top and unfair.

That's because, unlike the dead-on-arrival fast ferries, there's still a business case to be made for an expanded convention facility here.

Locals need look no farther than Expo 86 for proof that higher-than-expected costs don't have to translate into financial Armageddon.

The world's fair was plagued by a serious budget overrun. But eventually it won the public over, thanks to successful staging of the event and the flow of investment dollars into B.C. that followed.

Like Expo, the new convention centre can give trade and tourism here a significant boost -- as has been shown in other world cities.

San Francisco's Moscone Centre, for example, is famous not only for its international gatherings, but also for boosting the profile of the Bay Area's homegrown technology companies through world-famous events like the Macworld Expo.

And while these are apparently volatile times for the global convention business, it would be wrong to write off the industry as dying or dead.

In Boston, convention business has been so brisk at its three-year-old convention centre, which cost $800 million US to build, that the Massachusetts Convention

Centre Authority now wants to expand its exhibition space by 50 per cent.

Earlier this decade, Bostonians too moaned about soaring costs and dicey future prospects for the mammoth building near the south Boston waterfront.

Today, they're competing with the New Yorks and Londons on the world stage.

So instead of focusing on a nearly decade-old ferries fiasco, Vancouver's convention centre boobirds would be wise to look to New Englanders and Californians for inspiration -- before the trash talk in this city takes the lustre off our waterfront showpiece for good.

© The Vancouver Province 2007