Full House Expected For Canada Winter Games
Saturday, July 20, 2013 @ 5:32 AM
Prince George, B.C. – The largest sporting and cultural event ever held in northern BC is coming to Prince George and the question is, will the city be able to handle the expected influx of visitors? Two well-placed officials say the answer is a resounding "yes".The 2015 Canada Winter Games kick off here in 572 days, and 15-thousand visitors are expected to descend on the Prince George area over the eighteen days of competition. Earlier this month the B.C. First Nations Elders Gathering was held here, with 22-hundred delegates attending. One official said another one thousand people could have attended if the city’s hotel and motel rooms had not been booked to capacity. A couple thousand people were also in town for the soccer provincials. Which brings us to the question of accommodation during the 2015 games.
The CEO of Tourism Prince George, Aidan Kelly, says there are approximately two-thousand-one-hundred hotel/motel rooms in the city. He says during the Elders conference “the city was full on those days and I don’t necessarily view that as a negative thing. It’s a positive thing with a lot of activity in town, good economic development. Would it be nice for us to have additional capacity? Yes it would have been nice but there’s definitely periods during the year where the city is just sold out when it’s busy, and that happens in every city. So this is something we run into not very often in Prince George but once in a while.”
Kelly says room shortages are alleviated by event organizers making accommodation plans ahead of time. “I think the 2015 Canada Winter Games, they’ve been great in terms of planning accommodation ahead of time so, even though we’re over a year-and-a-half away from the event they’re well into the accommodation plan on what’s going to make sense, what’s going to work. So I think for the Canada Winter Games accommodation isn’t going to be an issue. Where it will be a little bit of an issue is that the town will be at capacity just for that one event, and so any other incremental traffic coming through, any business travel, any leisure travel tourists that are coming through Prince George, it could be challenging to find accommodation for those folks. The Canada Winter Games is going to tap all our resources.” Kelly says bed and breakfast operators will be busy during the games and says some people “may have to look at other surrounding communities. I think there will definitely be some spin-off effects for communities that are closer to Prince George.”
Anthony Everett is Chair of the 2015 Canada Winter Games Host Society and is also CEO of Northern BC Tourism. Everett says the number of hotel and motel rooms available in the city is not a concern. “These are things we’ve been taking into account since we looked at the bid (for the games) in 2010 and we wouldn’t have even been awarded the games if the feeling wasn’t by the Canada Games Council that we’d get accommodated. And there’s other options available as we move forward. One of the things is working with a third party to do home stay programs. There are a number of accommodations that don’t make up that 2100 that are not far outside of the city limits. And there’s about 50 bed and breakfasts in town. In addition the students are all out of school at that time so there are other contingencies that factor in…..UNBC, CNC and the schools as well. The critical need right now is to start working with some of the community groups, some of the associations and service groups, and that’s well underway.”
Everett says the games will take about 500 rooms out of the 2100 “so there’s still plenty of rooms left over.” He says with five years lead-in time, from the bid submission to the start of the games, the local hotels “have been well aware of this right from the beginning and so we’re anticipating how they’re managing their clientele in relation to the games. We’re finding they’re setting aside a fair number of rooms during the games.” He also notes that these games “will be the 25th edition, and the winter version of these games has been held in a number of locations that are considerably smaller than Prince George, and they managed just fine. So we’re not concerned about it. We feel we’re in pretty good shape actually.”
Everett says the 3600 athletes, coaches and officials will be housed in four of the larger downtown hotels. “It’s a Canada Games standard that athletes, coaches and officials all share rooms. So the rooms are all re-configured, so some athletes will be three or four to a room. And they’re right next door to the athletes village which is at the Civic Centre, run by the municipality of Prince George. So the athletes will go there for food and all sorts of things and they’re all within a block or so walking distance.”
Everett says the planning for an event this size is extremely complicated “and this is just a tiny piece of it and we’ve been planning for it since 2010. There’s going to be over 50 staff, 80 staff at games time who are paid, and then about 4-thousand volunteers. It’s a big, complicated event, but we’re in good shape.”
The 2015 Canada Winter Games are expected to generate between $70 million and $90 million in economic benefits to the Prince George region.
Comments
I heard they are going to kick people out of the Croft and the National to make room!
I`m all for these games coming to PG but i think they are totally wrong that PG can come up with enough housing for 15,000 people?? Even if some generous home owners, (and there are lots of them, bless them all) offer spare rooms, and the 50 B+B`s here are full, does this committee really think we can give 15,000 people a room ??? I also hope we have enough snow for them. Good luck though games committee…i sincerely hope you can pull it off as it will be a huge boost to PG`s economy and God knows we need it, right Mayor Green?? :-)
Let us hope that it is PLUS 10 degrees and raining for the duration of this colossal waste of taxpayers money. No way I would put any of these people up. I hope it rains and rains and rains. Then they could helicopter in some snow from hope or someplace. Pray for warm weather.
Still sore about the election results?
Mattyc. Feel free to hit the road you left wing nut bar!!
“In addition the students are all out of school at that time so there are other contingencies that factor inâ¦..UNBC, CNC and the schools as well.”
I need a bit of explanation for this one. February 13th to March 4th, 2015.
The official site states that there will be 2,350 athletes and 900 coaches/officials. Plus hundreds of media and medical professionals. Plus around 4,500 volunteers. Thousands of visitors.
I also understand that the games will actually be staged over two separate weeks, with athletes, coaches/officials for one set of events leaving and another coming in. I would think that there would be some overlap. I would also think that the visitors who will make up the viewing audience will not all stay for the entire two weeks. The media would, I am sure.
So, in reality, if one breaks down the logistics, one would not be looking at the total numbers, as the article deals with, one would be looking at the weekly numbers and even the daily numbers. It is those numbers that are important, as well as the number who will be staying in hotel accommodations both individually and shared, and those who will be billeted.
So, is the media release above very helpful to anyone other than repeatedly hearing that they can accommodate everyone, and that it will be a challenge, and a complex issue.
Quotes from above:
â¢âEverett says the games will take about 500 rooms out of the 2100â
â¢âEverett says the 3600 athletes, coaches and officials will be housed in four of the larger downtown hotels.â
â¢âso some athletes will be three or four to a roomâ
â¢âEverett says the planning for an event this size is extremely complicatedâ
â¢âItâs a big, complicated event, but weâre in good shape.â
So split that into two groups, which the article does not mention, with no overlap, and it works out to an average of about 4 to a room as opposed to some rooms.
I am not sure what is complicated about it. By now they should have a day by day number, broken down into the more or less known participant component, and then the unknown visitor component.
So back to the schools are out at the same time. Are students in residence accommodation at UNBC and CNC supposed to be vacating their rooms?
One would think they would be able to show the local media a few nice computer screens of the day-by-day projections with accommodation types shown.
But, hey, who wants to show people back of the napkin type sketches and calculations, right? LOL
mattyc is just a grumpy old man
pass it on ….. ;-)
This winter games reminds me of the new police station. When its over, we will probably and most likely be in the hole another 30 million? 13 days of businesse just wont cut it. Sorry, just saying. Im not planning to go to any games myself. Most people dont go.
Since the schools will be closed for the games, will it not be possible to house some people in gymnasiums? My kids have done that at different sporting events over the years, seems to work pretty well vs when one of my kids was billeted for the northern winter games in a house that clearly did not want to be housing several athletes. They ended up leaving and staying with other families who were happy to take the extra kids and actually feed them.
I am surprised no new hotels were developed in PG since the announcement of the games and only the Inn of the North has embarked on any renovations of significance. PG must have some long dark stretches of vacancies at other times of the year….
200 room Sandman has opened since the announcement, although they started on it before that.
Ramada has re-arranged its lobby area with a Starbucks and has shut down half the rooms over the last year+ to renew them. One of these days they may finish the outside and get that exposed structural hole fixed with a new canopy.
The Innn has been proposing stuff for a decade+ …. they are doing a minimal renovation of the lobby/retail area, nothing spectacular from the looks of it. The Ramada had their plans posted in the hallways.
When talking to hoteliers before the games, it sounded like they had a good occupancy rate compared to other cities our size.
There is only about 11 to 15 bed and breakfasts in town. That’s no where near 50
This is my first time on this site, and I don’t wish to be negative. However, I am most distressed to hear that some people are hoping that the winter games are a failure.
Whether we agree with the games, or not, they are a ‘done deal’. So…. let’s make the most of it. What gain is there in hoping it doesn’t succeed, except to show the world that we are failures. What does mattyc get out of our failing? Just to make him right?
Regarding accommodation – we have a Bed and Breakfast, and know of most of the B&Bs in town. Where the 50 bed and breakfasts come from, I don’t know. We can think of 16, plus one or two others out there that don’t advertise. Whoever came up with that number must have been looking at some freebie sites that are still advertising B&B’s that have been closed for many years.
15,000 people to be accommodated? I don’t think so. Not anywhere near that number will be successful in getting a place to stay. Should know, as we have turned away countless number during the Elders gathering, and this isn’t even close to what the winter games will bring in.
Someone shake their heads and ‘get real!!’
Everett is going to have all those without rooms stay in his basement, he’s got just enough foamies for everyone. Well more grab ass lack of planning, heh figure it’s coming from the CEO of Northern BC Tourism. Yup going to be a gong show and we have front row seats.
2100 rooms in PG ? Does that include places like that fancy motel across the street from the Victoria Medical building ?
When Forest Expo was still a large event about 10 or so years ago, rooms in PG were always booked solid and some late comers ended up staying in Quesnel. I believe we have grown by about 400 or so rooms since then.
I include the Casino in that. Not sure whether they will free up those rooms for people who may not be reasonably sure bets to do some gambling while they are staying there.
I am not sure if media such as CBC, CTV, TSN, for instance, will be staying more than one/two to a room.
The Yellowhead fire was a hit to the hotel inventory, so that would cancel out the casino or new sandman. Their only salvation is going to come through a huge number of volunteers opening their homes to billet these athletes. It has been done before.
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