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Demand for Olympic housing ramps up

First Games-related scam also comes to light

By Clare Ogilvie

George Slade is desperate for a home between Pemberton and Squamish.

In fact he needs hundreds of them.

That’s because the web developer has just launched a site to match Olympic Games-time home renters and Games attendees and he is seriously short of inventory.

“Quite frankly we are anxiously looking for new listings,” he said.

“Even today, three years out, we have far more people looking and demand. Right now we need probably 200 houses to fill the requests today.”

Slade and his two partners launched their Accommodate 2010 site in February (accommodate2010.com). Unlike some of the other sites offering Olympic time accommodation listings people who use this site have to pay for it.

You can pay $95.95 to simply list the property or you can pay $149.95 to list the property and get an “assurance audit” from the company, confirming that what is advertised is what is really on offer. Slade also plans to market his site and its contents to a network of 15,000 travel agents starting about 18 months out from the Games.

Most of the clients looking to rent right now are corporate, government or out-of-town media, said Slade.

“Those are the best clients you could get,” he said.

While they may not pay as much as some others they will rent places for longer and likely be more respectful of property. Currently most are offering about $200 a bed per night, depending on the quality of accommodation.

In the months and years to come more and more accommodation networks are likely to spring up. Just how to deal with them is under discussion by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Winter Games, tourism agencies, and by local and city governments.

At the forefront of Whistler’s concerns is making sure that visitors have a positive experience and that they find what they expected when they get here.

Local officials also want to make sure that resort workers are not displaced from rental units so that homeowners can cash in on the Games.

We know there will be increasing demand and we have yet to decide on the best way to manage the demand versus the community interest during the Games,” said Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed, adding that staff are working on a report on the issue.

“One of the things that Whistler council said very clearly to those people who are deliberating on the use of accommodation during the Games is that we need to take steps to secure employee accommodation during the Games before we make a decision on tourist accommodation.”

VANOC is working on adding a visitor information component to its website to offer advice and guidance to people who hope to come to the region for the Games.

In the long run, it’s hoped that accommodation providers will link to the VANOC site and to tourism sites so that visitors can get all the information they need.

“In the short term we have an aspiration to furnish some basic information on Vancouver 2010.com,” said Bill Copper, the director of commercial rights management for the 2010 Winter Games.

“There may even be a centralized site where a similar kind of service is offered in terms of listing private properties via one of the tourism entities.”

For Cooper it’s really all about getting reliable information into the hand of prospective visitors leading up to the Games.

“We can’t control the end product of what they receive but what I think VANOC can do is play a role of informing (visitors) in advance, of setting their expectations accurately, so that is where we will throw our hat in the ring,” said Cooper.

Meanwhile, companies like Accommodate 2010 are already booking accommodation.

As for companies using “2010” in their company name, Cooper said VANOC will look at each case independently to see if there is any intent to infringe on the trademark.

“What we are trying to protect against is unauthorized commercial association, so it is not so much singular use of a mark,” said Cooper.

“What we want to look for closely is to make sure that the consumer isn’t led to believe that this isn’t in some way an official Vancouver 2010 activity or 2010 service.”

This week also saw the first 2010 scam come to light.

Charles Anderson of Denver, Colorado was contacted and told that Vancouver 2010 had awarded him a $50,000 lottery prize. Anderson thought the whole thing was a bit fishy so he contacted VANOC’s offices and was told that no such lottery existed.

Cooper advised anyone who thinks they might be the victim of such a scam to contact their offices at 778-328-2010, or e-mail them at info@vancouver2010.com .

“These brands are big enough that you can just dust off an old scam model that you have in your cupboard and put a new logo on it and get it going again, whether it be World Cup, or the Olympics or whatever, these scams have to be expected,” said Cooper.

RCMP offered this warning on the scams.

“The 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games are a highly visible event, backed by the Olympic Games branding,” said Cst. Ben Hitchcock, a technical examiner with the Technologies Crime Program of the RCMP.

“As such, there is the possibility that criminals will use this information to craft emails enticing victims to bogus websites.

“(And) with the increase in the online auction fraud, there is a strong possibility that counterfeit tickets and other items may appear on these sites.”