The 2015 Canada Winter Games can almost hang a "no vacancy" sign on Prince George.
The rooms at the main hotels, motels and bed-and-breakfasts are already mostly booked during the Canada Winter Games period, triggering an aggressive home-stay program now featured on the Games website. Other accommodation possibilities are also being explored.
While some involved in the local economy are anxious to get maximum audience bang for the city's buck, the organizers of the Games have a message for the community, with the event still 140 days away: you're welcome.
The commercial accommodation rooms of the immediate area were carefully counted years ago, by the committee bidding for the Games, and examined again by the national Games supervisors before Prince George was selected. This current situation was anticipated, and hoped for.
As was done in past Canada Games events, the city's downtown core will be turned into the athletes village with those hotels booked exclusively and carefully arranged for all the incoming athletes, coaches and other officials.
The thousands of families, friends and fans have their pick of the other facilities outside of the core. The hope was these places would also be brimming with people coming to the city packing outside investment dollars for the local economy. With opening ceremonies still about four months away, that mission is already accomplished.
"It is a nice problem to have, to know you have already covered off that goal, and there are still many people looking to find accommodations here for the Games," said Team BC's chef de mission Rob Needham, who is coming in from out of town for the event himself. "But we do need to be creative to secure as many beds as possible. It's going to be a great show so we want as many of our family and friends as we can possibly get to come to Prince George."
That may mean some incoming audience will have to book rooms in Quesnel, Vanderhoof, perhaps even convincing summer facilities like Bednesti Resort, or private lake cabins to open despite the winter weather. An hour's drive for many urban dwellers is equivalent to their daily commute, so that would hardly be an imposition.
At this week's meetings of all provincial chefs de mission in Prince George, some officials also talked informally about setting up temporary structures like a village of pre-fab houses, mobile homes, and/or work-camp portables, especially if that could also act as an advertising opportunity for the B.C. companies that build such things.
Since the commercial accommodations industry is essentially sold out, it allows ideas like that to move forward without fear of cutting unfairly into their business.
"Making downtown your Games hub is a really good idea, and we see that it is already resulting in the other accommodations in Prince George filling up, which is really good news. That is a sign that things are going well," said Canada Games Council CEO Sue Hylland. "We do know that one piece we need to look at carefully is how to add more beds, to get as many people up here as we can. I know one of the things the Prince George organizing team is doing now is putting a lot of work into the home-stay program, so we expect that can add some opportunities, and we do know that sometimes there are blocks of rooms that do free up once it gets closer to Games time and those pictures gets clearer. There really are a lot of creative ways to address this. The main thing, though, is, it is a great problem to have right now and it is not unlike many other cities when they hosted the Games."
Needham said it was a priority issue for him, as head of the Team BC athletics organization. Regardless of sport, he explained, these athletes compete in the uniform of their home province. It was a realization that seeped into his bones when he was part of the Paralympics in Vancouver in 2010.
"Having those fans roaring for you, when you're facing competitors from other places, that means a lot for an athlete's performance and for their takeaway experiences. [In 2010] we got a lot of those goosebump moments, and we want the athletes from B.C. to get that chance here in Prince George," he said. "B.C. has never hosted the Canada Winter Games before, so we want our athletes to feel the support of the home crowd, and get to hear those roars for what they are doing in the field of competition. It's such a rare thing in an athlete's life, and we won't get that chance again in B.C. in our lifetime, so we want as many fans as possible to be here to cheer B.C. on against the other provinces."
