Flower Show adds a day for visitors

In 2010, when Drew Becher joined the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society as president, he found himself with a textbook business problem:

He was out of space at the Philadelphia Flower Show, yet he needed to expand the society's premier event if he wanted to realize his ambition of generating more revenue from it to fund the organization's ever-growing portfolio of projects.

There was, of course, room in the newly expanded Convention Center for more blossoms. But adding more square footage to the already vast show would make it unmanageable, Becher said.

At 550,000 square feet, trekking through the show already makes for a tiring, if exhilarating, day. "It's a monster," he said.

What to do?

Use the existing space for more hours - opening this year's British-themed show, "Brilliant," to the public a full extra day, on Saturday. (That used to be preview day for society members, with the public opening Sunday.)

"I don't think we need to expand [the space]," Becher said. "We have the capacity to expand attendance in different ways."

Last year's Flower Show generated $61 million in regional economic impact, including production costs and visitor and participant expenditures, reported the accounting firm KPMG.

This year, Becher hopes to raise that impact to $63 million, mostly by increasing the per-hour take for every minute the Flower Show's doors are open.

The extra day is vital.

Before, he said, "for people coming from out of town, that only left one weekend. We think definitely there will be a pickup in people coming."

But Becher also has been building in evening programming, for after the tour buses leave - on Sunday evening, there's a special event for the gay community. And preopening 7:30 a.m. Flower Show visits are sold out, he said.

Going back to the business text, the key to the experiment's success will be Becher's ability to add extra hours with relatively low incremental expense.

To accomplish that, he gambled by not adding an expensive day to the show's move-in, which began Feb. 20. Instead, he ponied up less than $100,000 in overtime to make sure the show, which costs $10 million to produce, was ready in time for the members' Friday preview.

Philadelphia's tourism establishment is happy with the extra Saturday.

"It's something we've been wanting for a long time," said Meryl Levitz, head of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp.

Now, she said, the word has to get out.

The show is typically not a big overnight draw, despite hotel packages.

"Hotels are not seeing a significant increase in room nights from the Flower Show," Ed Grose, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association, said in an e-mail.

The extra day should attract more day-trippers, Grose said, with hoteliers hoping that, in time, it becomes a "demand generator for our hotels."

Sandy Borowsky, a vice president at Starr Transit Co. bus tours in Trenton, said she had high hopes for the extra Saturday.

To capitalize on it, Starr offered four Flower Show trips this year, up from three last year.

All her day trips have been down because of the economy, Borowsky said, so the only two Flower Show trips she was able to sell were the ones on the Saturdays.

"People, in general, like to travel better on Saturday than on Sunday."