Meeting News - November 19, 2007 - (Page 50)

Destination Insider: Canada continued from page 46 Also in January, the 500,000-sf International Centre will open its 50,000-sf conference center expansion, an $11.5-million project that will include 12 new meeting rooms and a 17,000-sf ballroom. Late in 2008, the Direct Energy Center will open its conference center expansion, which will include 45,400 sf of ballroom space and 32,000 sf of meeting space. Chateau Lake Louise, which offers groups 36,000 sf of meeting space, to the town’s newest offering, the 116-suite Fox Hotel & Suites. Though it offers no meeting space, it is located in downtown Banff, near properties like the Inns of Banff, which offers 3,000 sf of function space. In Whistler, BC, just outside Vancouver, the 77suite Nita Lake Lodge is set to open in January, with 4,000 sf of meeting space. The boutique hotel will aim for the intimacy of a high-end private chalet with the amenities of a luxury hotel, including a full-service spa and wellness center, as well as a lakeside restaurant. Whistler offers nearly 150,000 sf of conference space across a variety of venues, including the 40,000-sf Telus Whistler Conference Centre, a central meeting location for larger meetings, which was renovated in 2003. On the East Coast, it will soon be easier for U.S. groups to reach Quebec’s Mont Tremblant. Over the summer, Continental Airlines announced nonstop service to the resort town beginning Dec. 14 until April from Newark Liberty International Airport. Mont Tremblant has a shared convention facility with 10,500 sf of space, but a $1-billion village expansion project has begun that will bring new hotels and a 45,000-sf convention facility by 2009. Event Report Getting to Know You Professional engineers group heads north to meet Canadian colleagues Each year, the board members of the National Society of Professional Engineers attend a fall meeting as their ﬁrst order of business to get to know each other. In September, the organization’s 18 leaders convened out of the United States for the ﬁrst time, in Vancouver, where they experienced a new city and met four members from their organization’s Canadian counterpart, Engineers Canada. “It’s been a personal motivation of mine as a meeting planner to encourage the board to see what’s happening north of the border,” said Polly Collins, NSPE’s director of meetings, who booked the group at the Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel. “We as a national group need to understand what our neighbors are doing because working together makes us work better.” Before getting to know their Canadian peers, Collins wanted to make sure the group of engineers knew each other ﬁrst. With the help of the Vancouver Convention & Visitors Bureau, she identiﬁed Pinnacle Pursuits, a local event management company that helped organize a GPS event. The event split the board into teams of three, giving each trio assignments to ﬁnd caches around the city and earn game points. “Teambuilding efforts are meant to create an environment where members have to talk [to each other],” said Collins, who added that the event was a smash hit and a great way for the board to break the ice and see Vancouver. The main challenge for Collins came after the meeting, when she had to ﬁnd all of the appropriate paperwork to obtain Canada’s refundable taxes. Overall though, heading north was the success for which she had hoped. “The learning curve was a very interesting one for the whole board,” said Collins. As opposed to previous meetings held in the States, where only the Canadian board president would attend, going to Vancouver gave both full boards a chance to meet and interact. For the next board meeting this winter, the team will be traveling to Puerto Rico to take advantage of another chance to learn from a new set of engineers, while taking with them the bonds they formed in Vancouver. H —Section written by Phillip Hennessey www.meetingnews.com Expanding Options for Groups in Resort Towns New boutique offerings are supplementing existing conference offerings in several Canadian resort towns. They are giving both planners of large corporate events and smaller incentive organizers more options in Canada’s national parks, renowned for their pristine beauty. “We’ve got beautiful evergreens, tall mountains, and clean, fresh air,” said Lori Grant, spokeswoman for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts based in the Alberta resort town of Banff. “We have all of the high-end amenities that you’d be looking for [in] a citycenter meeting.” Properties in Banff range from Grant’s Fairmont MeetingNews Q & A: With the U.S. dollar weakening in the global market, MeetingNews asked Luc Charbonneau, director of sales and marketing for Tourisme Montreal, what he thought it will mean to the Canadian meetings market and what the CVB plans to do. Montreal’s Dollar Concerns It’s an area that scares us in two ways. One, we hope it won’t be a deterrent for U.S. businesses to come to Montreal. We also hope that not too much of the Canadian business will go south. Q A Q A How concerned are you with the weak state of the U.S. dollar? Q A Q A What do you expect to see going forward? How do you plan to deal with this issue? Realistically, we know we might lose a few associations that will decide to stay in the U.S. until the dollar gets a bit stronger. We’ll compensate for those room nights by being more active with the corporate markets in the U.S.—especially incentives— from where budgets are not as much of an issue. What will this mean for the convention business in Montreal? We have had a very strong [roster] of potential clients that we’ve worked with and that we’re close to. We hope that these strong and healthy business relationships will keep us aﬂoat during this dollar situation. We are concerned, but so far, the numbers are holding up. Since 9/11, we’ve been hit with SARS in 2003, then the passport issue, and now the dollar issue; there’s always something that makes business more challenging. That said, it is far from being unhealthy. 50 MeetingNews November 19, 2007 http://www.meetingnews.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Meeting News - November 19, 2007

Meeting News - November 19, 2007 Contents What’s Up @ MeetingNews.com Chef Talk Transportation & Services People Making News MN Webcast Report Successful Meetings University Advertisers Index Live from the Forum

Meeting News - November 19, 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.