Snohomish County should expect some spin-off business from the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, B.C., just from the huge number of travelers alone.
That was the advice from Ray LeBlond of Tourism B.C., who noted his province expects to sell 1.8 million tickets to a variety of events.
LeBlond, a communications official for the tourism agency, tossed out some other numbers Tuesday as the keynote speaker of the quarterly forum of the Snohomish County Tourism Bureau. They included:
80. The number of countries involved in the Olympics.
2,500. The number of volunteers.
6,700. The numbers of athletes and officials for the Olympic Games — and the ParaOlympic Games, which will be held there at the same time.
10,000. The number of accredited members of the media.
3 billion. The number of television viewers.
LeBlond talked about what his agency and his province are doing to prepare for the Olympics. Many of the venues, he said, have been completed. He said the government has already done a great deal of work in lining up enough rooms for athletes, sponsors and the media. That group alone, he said, will need 16,000 rooms in Vancouver, B.C., and 3,000 more in Whistler, which will play host to the downhill skiing events.
All told, he said, 500,000 of what he called room nights will be needed for the Games.
“We do believe that people are going to be looking for reasonable accommodations elsewhere,” he said of Game attendees. “There’s Calgary, about an hour flight away, Victoria and you guys. We do believe opportunity is here.”
He said that during the last winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, much of the discussion centered around “how lousy their hotel room was and tough it was to get around the city.”
“It’s the experience that matters,” to many attendees, “not the sporting events,” LeBlond said.
He lauded the state’s push for an enhanced driver’s license to make border travel quicker, saying that is an important effort.
And he suggested that in addition to accommodations, transporting people around the area and through it to the Games would be a business opportunity.
LeBlond noted that the 1986 Exposition and the 1988 Olympics in Calgary were both catalysts to dramatic growth in tourism in Canada, noting that in both events, tourism rose sharply and never did settle back to the old growth trends.
Amy Spain, Snohomish County’s tourism director, said about half the people from the United States who are planning to attend the Games will be driving there and are expected to pass through Snohomish County.
“We’d like them to come back to Snohomish County on a future trip,” she said.
The county, through an organization called SnoGold 2010, has already been working on plans to promote the county as a tourist location before, during and after the Games.
Spain asked communities and organizations to let SnoGold know about events, attractions and services that travelers might be interested in by e-mailing SnoGold2010@snoco.org.
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