Why Red Deer?
Access
Easy access to international airports in Edmonton and Calgary. Alberta's 3rd largest city is central, right in the middle of both major cities on the Queen Elizabeth 2 Highway.
Gold Medal in Experience
Red Deer has a reputable history in hosting events, from international, national and regional, whether it be sports, culture, festivals or conventions, we know how to host events!
Volunteer Base
Hundreds of central Albertan's are standing by waiting to celebrate your event. Our community lives to volunteer, support events and provide you with some of our welcoming hospitality!
Corporate Community
Once here your event will be front and centre! You will have captured the attention of our city, our county and the engaged corporate community who values the importance of events.
State of the Art Facilities
Whether it's a major sporting event with thousands of fans and participants, or it's a large provincial convention for hundreds of delegates, Red Deer's facilities are second to none! See our venues here!
Accommodations
When it comes to event accommodations, our community has you covered. Our hotels can be found strategically throughout our city. No matter where you select, you're only minutes from our event venues. See them here!
Our Vision
"By 2030 Red Deer will be recognized as the top major event destination among mid-sized cities in Canada"
Tourism Red Deer is taking the lead when it comes to event attraction and support. We are now the one door in for all things Events Tourism in the Red Deer Region. From major events to large regional events, from Sports, Cultural, Festivals to Conventions and Conferences, International, National to Provincial, we want your event to call Red Deer home!
Join the elite in events hosted here including the 2019 Canada Winter Games, the Canadian Finals Rodeo, the World Juniors Hockey Championships, the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, the International Powwow, and the Senior Men's Baseball Championships, just to name a few.
Tourism Red Deer can leverage its support for event organizers in many ways including sponsorship, marketing and promotions, development, volunteers, networking, and corporate connections.
Tourism Red Deer has two intake deadlines, January 15th and July 15th of every year. Tourism Red Dee will review events shortly after and make their decision on whether the event qualifies for support, shortly after.
How you get that support depends heavily on how your event qualifies in our evaluation. To qualify and continue with our process, we ask you to consider the following. Is your event a major or large regional event? Is it a community or localized event?
To better understand where your event may sit, we have defined the categories of events below:
Major Event
Major events are defined as events that have all the following characteristics:
• Attract many thousands of participants and/or spectators with a high percentage of visitors coming from outside the community.
• Will generate significant visitor spending in the community.
• Have significant market demand, market reach, community-wide impacts, can be leveraged for year-round promotions, and align with the tourism brand.
• Deliver significant economic, social, and reputational benefits to the community.
• Have significance on a provincial, national, and/or international scale. Examples of major events include the Canada Winter Games, Scotties Tournament of Hearts, IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship, and the Juno Awards.
Large Regional Event
Regional events are defined as events that have all the following characteristics:
• Medium to large-scale tourism events that attract hundreds or thousands of participants and/or spectators with a high percentage of visitors coming from outside the community.
• Will generate visitor spending in the community.
• Deliver economic, social, and reputational benefits to the community.
• Would generally have significance on a regional and/or provincial scale. Some events may have national or international reach.
Examples of regional tourism events include medium to large-scale sport tournaments, cultural events, festivals, and meetings and conventions.
Small Regional & Community Event
Generally smaller in scale compared to major and large regional events.
- Likely attracts a smaller number of participants and spectators.
- May not charge admission or entry fees
- May have a more local focus, with a lower percentage of visitors from outside the community.
- Still contributes to the local economy and community development.
- Examples: Local sports competitions, community festivals, local cultural events, small-scale conventions.
Are you a smaller regional or community event and are still looking for financial assistance:
You can also enjoy our member benefits by having your organization join us as a Tourism Red Deer member by clicking here!
A place like no other
Your event, our location, a winning combination! See it for yourself.
What's next?
Let's get started! To ensure we understand your event, we will be asking for your help in providing us with some information with our event evaluation form. This process allows us to score and evaluate each event fairly and effectively on the needed criteria. Here are the next steps in our event support process.
Step 1: Fill out Event Submission Form
If your event requires Tourism Red Deer's support and qualifies the above preliminary criteria, then let's hear from you! Fill out the form below and provide us with the most accurate information possible. We want to really understand what your event can do and how we can best support it's success.
Step 2: Event Evaluation
Our team and Event Advisory Committee will review your submission form, and if there are any further questions we will be in touch. If there are no further questions our team will review and evaluate the event.
Step 3: Tourism Red Deer Decision
Once reviewed our team will setup a call to explain our decision and go over the next steps.
Step 4: Post Event Evaluation
Approved events are expected to help us capture economic impact information including ticket sales, hotel stays, and visitor data, so we can execute an economic impact assessment report upon completion of the event.
Ready to submit your event?
Our team is here to help and focused on the success of your event. Fill out an application and tell us about your event!
Frequently asked event questions
The City of Red Deer has a population of just over 109 thousand people, and if you include the outlying Red Deer County region, it will push it just over 130 thousand people.
The answer depends on what your event is all about. How many visitors will your event bring to Red Deer? Will there be overnight stays for those coming to your event? Will you be charging admission to your event? Many factors will determine if your event is big enough to see a return on investment and an economic impact to our region.
We support many different types of events, in many different ways. Financial support will only be provided for the Major and Large Regional Events that qualify the Tourism Red Deer Events Evaluation. We measure dozens of different criteria of your event to see if it meets our required expectations.
We have 2 intakes for submissions throughout the calendar year, the deadlines are January 15th, and July 15th of each year. We do this to ensure there is time to review and award support to those who qualify in time for your event. We also will review requests in a timely fashion.
Our team will also be able to provide some marketing and promotions assistance, and development work that may include, volunteers, corporate connections, and networking to other support services.
Tourism Red Deer will work with the organizer of your event to collect your requests through an RFP form, then we will provide our member hoteliers with the information. We will then provide you with the offerings from the participating hotels for your group to decide on how you will proceed. We ask you to contact the hoteliers directly and to our team on your decision.
If your event doesn't qualify our preliminary criteria (on being a major or large regional event) then we suggest you can look for community or municipal grant opportunities. We also suggest that looking at corporate sponsorship or becoming a Tourism Red Deer member to access our member benefits.
Tourism Red Deer will assist you as best as we can, providing contacts for event services you may require. Most commonly your event venue will be able to provide some direct contacts to help you during the event. Tourism Red Deer is not a host entity, we focus on event attraction and event support.
