There is lots of room at the inn.
That’s the message tourism officials in Whistler want to tell the world now that 2010 Olympic organizers are close to securing all the accommodation they need for the mega-event.
“We know that there are 10,000 rooms in Whistler that are nightly rentals,” said Diana Lyons, vice president of operations for Tourism Whistler.
Those include upscale hotels such as the Four Seasons as well as accommodation offered by property management companies. That number does not include B&Bs and a few other condominium-type accommodations.
“All along (the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Games) has said that they need between 5,000 and 6,000 rooms in the Sea to Sky corridor. So they are really only talking about 45 to 50 per cent of the available rooms in Whistler,” said Lyons, who has become concerned that potential guests may be shying away from the resort thinking there is no accommodation left.
“That’s absolutely not the case,” she said.
Bruce Van Mook, who overseas the management of two hotels and 200 condos and private homes in the resort for Whistler Premiere Accommodations, agrees.
“If the story is about that there is no room at the inn we can certainly refute that because at this point there is room at the inn,” he said.
“Our goal, in fact, is that there isn’t room at the inn. That is our business.”
Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed said the resort has been working on the accommodation supply and demand issue for months.
“It is probably our greatest challenge in trying to understand what is the actual demand going to be two years out,” he said.
“Nobody has a crystal ball and unfortunately we have to prepare for the worst. We can’t hope for the best. We have to prepare for the worst and have a variety of contingencies worked out.”
The municipality is considering relaxing accommodation zoning so that homeowners in Whistler can rent rooms to visitors during the Olympics.
But, said Melamed, officials are concerned that sub-standard places will be offered for rent, hurting Whistler’s image, and that employees will be displaced as homeowners seek more money through nightly rentals.
Surveys have just been completed on how many residents and second-home owners will stay in Whistler for the 2010 Games.
“It is significantly higher than we expected,” said Melamed.
All indications have been that more people will want to come and stay in Whistler for the Olympics than there is currently room for.
Though VANOC is close to securing all its room needs, many
other user groups are just starting to look, including security officials, the
unaccredited media, corporations, foreign government delegations, national
sport organizations and many others. How many rooms those groups will need is
unknown.
VANOC has secured 4,000 of the 5,000 rooms it needs in the corridor, said Nejat Sarp, vice president of accommodations for VANOC. Most of those are in Whistler.
That number hasn’t increased since March, when Sarp first announced that 4,000 rooms had been secured. VANOC expects to have all its room needs met by next summer.
“We want everyone to come and enjoy the Games,” said Sarp. “That’s across all different client groups, through VANOC, the spectators, local guests or whomever because at the end of the day this is everybody’s Games.”
VANOC needs 15,000 rooms in the Vancouver area. About 95 per cent of those have already been secured.
While the summer and winter Games are quite different in scale it is interesting to note that the Beijing 2008 organizing committee has secured 30,000 rooms at 120 topflight hotels for the IOC, sponsors, and dignitaries. The price settled on for Olympic family members is $380 a night.
There are about 300,000 rooms available in Beijing and it is expected that the daily flow of customers will be about 250,000. They may book for as few as four nights. It’s not clear yet what rooms will be worth on the open market.
The Beijing Games, which run from August 8 to 24 th, expect to draw 500,000 non-Chinese and one million domestic visitors.
Most of the accommodation providers in Whistler, said Lyons, have not committed all their rooms to VANOC, rather they have offered only a percentage.
That means that they will have accommodation available at Games time. But, said Lyons, it is unlikely that it will be available to book until about a year out, for logistical reasons.
“Hotels never release their inventory until a year in advance,” she said.
“All the large players, and probably a lot of the small players, are right now taking wait lists for folks that want to come and stay with them (at Games time). But they are not quite ready to make that firm booking.
“However, once they are ready they will all go to their waitlists and (start) calling people to see who is interested.”
There are also some properties, which have to date decided not to offer any accommodation to VANOC.
“We have some hotel properties that are doing that… and some of the independent renters have said they are holding out to the end because they think the demand will be so high,” said Melamed “But we are not sure.”
There were property owners who did the same thing at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake and many of them were left sitting empty at Games time.
However, Whistler may buck the Olympic trend where this has happened in the past.
“There have been indications about the demand and the interest that suggest that Whistler may break that pattern and so some of the concern about accommodation is well founded and we are not sure, frankly, what we can do about it,” said Melamed.
“The properties are privately owned.”
What people need to keep in mind, said Melamed, is that the Games are only one event in Whistler’s lifetime.
“The message we are trying to reinforce is that there is a greater objective here for Whistler and our interest is longer term than the experience of the 17 days (of the Games),” he said.
