Ottawa Tourism backs Kanata North’s Hub350 as part of effort to rebuild business events

Ottawa Tourism has announced its support for Kanata North’s new Hub350 project, a new ecosystem for industry, academic, finance, and community partners to collaborate and set to open in October 2021. The agreement includes access to newsletters, events, and physical space within the 12,000-square-foot facility located within Canada’s largest tech park – Kanata North – with 540 tech companies and 33,000+ employees. The arrangement is a concrete result of Think Ottawa, an initiative led by Ottawa Tourism, Invest Ottawa, and the Shaw Centre, which aims to secure more conference business in Ottawa by highlighting tools and resources that are available to showcase local expertise. In February 2021, an open letter from Ottawa Tourism’s president and CEO Michael Crockatt targeted Ottawa’s business, academic, and association leaders, encouraging them to work with Ottawa Tourism to showcase local innovators by hosting future business events; Kanata North rose to that challenge and reached out, leading to this agreement. “Ottawa Tourism’s Business Events team is constantly innovating and this is just the latest example,” said Crockatt. “Being able to demonstrate to key decision-makers in Ottawa’s high-technology world what we bring to the table in terms of convention bids, incentive travel, and more will be game-changing.” “Through this partnership, Hub350 will foster collaboration between the technology sector and Ottawa Tourism to attract world-class events to Canada’s capital, home to the country’s largest technology park,” said Jamie Petten, president and executive director of the Kanata North Business Association. “Hub350 will be a vibrant centre of activity for our community to gather. Post-Covid, we look forward to hosting many events such as user conferences, product demonstrations, and global training seminars in partnership with Ottawa Tourism and Kanata North technology park.” Other recent initiatives by the Business Events team at Ottawa Tourism include: co-founding the new Hybrid City Alliance, allowing international meeting planners the ability to easily plan multi-city hub meetings, and launching Virtually Ottawa, a tool to show off the city’s resources to meeting planners until in-person meetings are an option again.