Yesterday many Olympic fans received horrible news. The accommodations they had booked for Vancouver 2010 were cancelled. Anyone who had booked to stay on the NCL cruise ship were told they had to find another place to stay, with only 8 days to go before the Olympics begin. I can't even imagine what that must be like. They will get their money back but are faced with the job of having to find accommodations again so close to the beginning of the Games.
The saddest part was children who are attending the Olympics through Make A Wish foundation were to be staying on the cruise ship. From what I have read, those children and their families have been found other accommodations. Many others though are scrambling to find something at the last minute. If you need assistance in finding accommodations here is the link to the Tourism Vancouver website and some links that may help you. I wish you the best of luck. From the sounds of it, there are places available so hopefully everyone is booked somewhere again real soon.
Showing posts with label Olympic Accommodation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Olympic Accommodation. Show all posts
Friday, February 5, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The Kindness of Strangers
Vancouver, you have some pretty amazing people in your city but you probably already knew that. I have been the recipient of your kindness, generosity and Olympic spirit the last few weeks and am very touched and grateful.
If you have been following my posts for awhile, you will remember a few months ago I wrote about coming up with this crazy idea to fly into Vancouver for the weekend of the Opening Ceremony, maybe even getting a ticket for the Opening Ceremony. Our original trip is planned for the second week of the Olympics. This Opening weekend trip would be in addition to that. The deal I made with myself was I would do it but only if someone let me stay at their place. I shouldn’t even be spending money to fly out there again, much less pay for a place to stay. If I could stay with someone I knew in Vancouver then I would spend the money on airfare to get there for opening weekend.
As time went by, it looked less and less likely that I was going to be able to go. No one had offered to let me stay with them and I didn’t feel I knew some well enough to ask them outright. In updated blog posts I made casual mention of this fact and was resigning myself that maybe this wasn’t meant to be. My Olympic karma had run out. Then an amazing and unexpected thing happened, the offers started rolling in. Vancouver people started emailing me, sending messages on Facebook and Twitter offering me their couches, second bedrooms and sofa beds. A fellow blogger from Inside Vancouver even offered up her mother’s place to me! Some of these people I knew through my blog and was corresponding with on a regular basis. Others were frequent readers of my blog but I had never heard from them before their offers of accommodation. In total, I had 6 people offering to let me stay with them or with people that they knew. At first it was pretty disconcerting to be getting invites from complete strangers but after awhile I wasn’t even surprised. I realized that these are Vancouver people, proud of their city, honoured to be hosting people from all over the world and wanting to share the experience with Olympic fans like me. These people are spreading Olympic spirit and Vancouver spirit all across their city and country.
Thank you for letting me be a part of it.
And in case you were wondering, I have found a place to stay with an acquaintance in Yaletown. I will be in Vancouver when the Olympics begin and couldn’t be happier. There is no other place I would rather be that weekend. See you in Vancouver on February 12, 2010.
If you have been following my posts for awhile, you will remember a few months ago I wrote about coming up with this crazy idea to fly into Vancouver for the weekend of the Opening Ceremony, maybe even getting a ticket for the Opening Ceremony. Our original trip is planned for the second week of the Olympics. This Opening weekend trip would be in addition to that. The deal I made with myself was I would do it but only if someone let me stay at their place. I shouldn’t even be spending money to fly out there again, much less pay for a place to stay. If I could stay with someone I knew in Vancouver then I would spend the money on airfare to get there for opening weekend.
Thank you for letting me be a part of it.
And in case you were wondering, I have found a place to stay with an acquaintance in Yaletown. I will be in Vancouver when the Olympics begin and couldn’t be happier. There is no other place I would rather be that weekend. See you in Vancouver on February 12, 2010.
Monday, November 16, 2009
I'm in The Washington Post!
Awhile ago I spoke to a journalist who was writing a story on finding accommodations for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. The story below is what appeared this past weekend in the Travel section of The Washington Post. You'll find the part about me at the very end of the article.
Its really exciting to me to be included in such an article. I've never been in a paper before in my life!
This was the second time I had been approached by someone doing a story on finding places to stay for the Olympics. It is a topic that has a lot of interest. It was one of the most challenging aspects of our trip. If money is not a concern, there are more options available to you, but to someone like me on a tight budget, it was pretty difficult. But I am not one to settle for anything. Due to some hard work from myself and my family, I was able to find a place within my budget in the location that I wanted. For anyone still looking for a place to stay, I sympathize with you. It's not easy but it is possible.
Enjoy the article.
By Remy Scalza
Sunday, November 15, 2009
It doesn't take a gold medal in arithmetic to see that the numbers didn't add up.
About 250,000 spectators are expected to pour into Vancouver, B.C., for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in February. Yet according to the city's Olympic committee, only a paltry 10,000 hotel rooms were available to them. With three months to go before the Opening Ceremonies, the pool of rooms at hotels in and around Vancouver -- from highway HoJos to the Four Seasons -- has essentially dried up.
"Traditional downtown accommodation is for the most part booked," says Emily Armstrong of Tourism Vancouver, the city's tourism agency. "And it's been that way for about a year."
The Olympic housing crunch is nothing new: In recent years, Athens, Salt Lake City and Turin, Italy, all faced shortages. (The micromanaged Beijing Games were a notable exception.) It's not just the massive influx of spectators that's to blame. The "Olympic family" -- the tens of thousands of officials, observers, sponsors and media who make up the official Olympic entourage -- traditionally gets first dibs on lodgings. In Vancouver, the family blocked off more than 21,000 rooms, leaving ordinary fans to scramble for the remaining 10,000.
In a bid to avert a housing crisis, the city's Olympic planners have advanced some creative solutions. The 1,100-room Norwegian Star cruise ship will dock in an industrial port north of Vancouver, serving as a floating hotel for the duration of the Games, which will run Feb. 12-28. A popular city beach has been turned into an urban RV park, and provincial campgrounds around Vancouver will open early for fans who choose to brave frigid winter nights in the great outdoors.
"Accommodating everyone has never been a concern," Armstrong says. "People will just have to be a bit more flexible."
For some fans, being flexible might require bunking with strangers. With the housing well running dry, officials have also begun steering visitors to digs normally reserved for youth travelers, free spirits and the transient: backpacker hostels. "You can't find a better deal anywhere," says Del Cook, who handles check-in at the central Vancouver branch of Hosteling International, or HI, a popular hostel just blocks from several Olympic venues. The numbers bear him out: $40 buys a dorm bunk bed for the night and free breakfast during the Games. (By comparison, the airport Comfort Inn was recently offering a rare Olympic vacancy for $465 a night.)
The hostel is on the edge of the city's pub and club district, in a zone where ethnic restaurants and glitzy bars are gradually supplanting tattoo parlors and pawnshops. Inside the busy lobby, international travelers ask for directions in halting English while hip-hop plays in the background.
"We're the best hostel in town, and I've stayed in all of them," Cook says. For those to whom the word hostel brings to mind grungy showers and pots of instant ramen bubbling away on a communal stove, HI might be a pleasant surprise. Apart from traditional dorms, there are plenty of private rooms, and daily maid service, linens and towels are part of the deal. A former hotel, the historic building also comes with a roguishly checkered past: In 1971, undercover Mounties seized a record haul of 300 pounds of Japanese pearls from businessmen staying here; they'd been stolen from Seattle's airport in a bungled plot straight out of "Fargo."
Still, the charms of HI's chill-out lounge and raucous pub crawls presumably will be lost on certain Olympic visitors. Two blocks from the hostel -- on the 29th floor of a luxury apartment building -- is an entirely different accommodation alternative.
"I've never, ever rented before," says 44-year-old Randall Weaver, who has decided to lease his one-bedroom condo to Olympics fans for the Games. "But I'm an entrepreneur. I thought if I could get some money out of the Olympics, then why not?"
Weaver is not the only homeowner hoping to cash in on the city's housing crunch. In the prelude to the Games, dozens of temporary-rental Web sites have sprung up listing thousands of private Vancouver homes, from sleek, high-rise condos like Weaver's to suburban houses.
"For Vancouver property owners with space to rent out, the Olympics are a mini gold rush," says Tsur Somerville, a professor at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business.
But so far, Weaver has yet to hit it big. In his sunroom, with floor-to-ceiling windows that offer panoramic views of the Vancouver skyline and the snowcapped mountains beyond, he explains that his condo has been booked for only three days. At $550 a night, however, it's enough "to help with the mortgage."
If anything, his rates are a bit on the low end. One-bedroom downtown apartments are going for an average of $4,000 a week, according to Rent for the Games, a realty agency that has booked more than 400 temporary Olympic rentals and lists another 710 properties on its Web site. Hefty prices have led some fans to raise cries of price-gouging.
"People are being asked to pay exorbitant amounts," says economist Somerville. "But we're not talking about poor people who need to eat. It's not clear to me that people flying halfway around the world can be gouged."
That is cold comfort, however, for Olympic fans still searching for an elusive bed in Vancouver.
A true Olympic die-hard from Toronto, 35-year-old Christina Wallaert, remembers not only the names of the 1988 Calgary ice dancing medalists but also the background music from their programs. After securing Olympic tickets in a lottery last June, she spent six weeks scouring the Internet before finding accommodations in a downtown condo. She won't disclose the exact price, but says it was in line with prices at other rental condos in the area.
"It's more than I've ever paid to stay anywhere else," Wallaert says. "But I think we got a very good deal."
Scalza is a freelance food and travel writer based in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics. To see more of his work, visit his website.
Its really exciting to me to be included in such an article. I've never been in a paper before in my life!
This was the second time I had been approached by someone doing a story on finding places to stay for the Olympics. It is a topic that has a lot of interest. It was one of the most challenging aspects of our trip. If money is not a concern, there are more options available to you, but to someone like me on a tight budget, it was pretty difficult. But I am not one to settle for anything. Due to some hard work from myself and my family, I was able to find a place within my budget in the location that I wanted. For anyone still looking for a place to stay, I sympathize with you. It's not easy but it is possible.
Enjoy the article.
Hotel shortage sets off an Olympic scramble
Sunday, November 15, 2009
It doesn't take a gold medal in arithmetic to see that the numbers didn't add up.
About 250,000 spectators are expected to pour into Vancouver, B.C., for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in February. Yet according to the city's Olympic committee, only a paltry 10,000 hotel rooms were available to them. With three months to go before the Opening Ceremonies, the pool of rooms at hotels in and around Vancouver -- from highway HoJos to the Four Seasons -- has essentially dried up.
"Traditional downtown accommodation is for the most part booked," says Emily Armstrong of Tourism Vancouver, the city's tourism agency. "And it's been that way for about a year."
The Olympic housing crunch is nothing new: In recent years, Athens, Salt Lake City and Turin, Italy, all faced shortages. (The micromanaged Beijing Games were a notable exception.) It's not just the massive influx of spectators that's to blame. The "Olympic family" -- the tens of thousands of officials, observers, sponsors and media who make up the official Olympic entourage -- traditionally gets first dibs on lodgings. In Vancouver, the family blocked off more than 21,000 rooms, leaving ordinary fans to scramble for the remaining 10,000.
In a bid to avert a housing crisis, the city's Olympic planners have advanced some creative solutions. The 1,100-room Norwegian Star cruise ship will dock in an industrial port north of Vancouver, serving as a floating hotel for the duration of the Games, which will run Feb. 12-28. A popular city beach has been turned into an urban RV park, and provincial campgrounds around Vancouver will open early for fans who choose to brave frigid winter nights in the great outdoors.
"Accommodating everyone has never been a concern," Armstrong says. "People will just have to be a bit more flexible."
For some fans, being flexible might require bunking with strangers. With the housing well running dry, officials have also begun steering visitors to digs normally reserved for youth travelers, free spirits and the transient: backpacker hostels. "You can't find a better deal anywhere," says Del Cook, who handles check-in at the central Vancouver branch of Hosteling International, or HI, a popular hostel just blocks from several Olympic venues. The numbers bear him out: $40 buys a dorm bunk bed for the night and free breakfast during the Games. (By comparison, the airport Comfort Inn was recently offering a rare Olympic vacancy for $465 a night.)
The hostel is on the edge of the city's pub and club district, in a zone where ethnic restaurants and glitzy bars are gradually supplanting tattoo parlors and pawnshops. Inside the busy lobby, international travelers ask for directions in halting English while hip-hop plays in the background.
"We're the best hostel in town, and I've stayed in all of them," Cook says. For those to whom the word hostel brings to mind grungy showers and pots of instant ramen bubbling away on a communal stove, HI might be a pleasant surprise. Apart from traditional dorms, there are plenty of private rooms, and daily maid service, linens and towels are part of the deal. A former hotel, the historic building also comes with a roguishly checkered past: In 1971, undercover Mounties seized a record haul of 300 pounds of Japanese pearls from businessmen staying here; they'd been stolen from Seattle's airport in a bungled plot straight out of "Fargo."
Still, the charms of HI's chill-out lounge and raucous pub crawls presumably will be lost on certain Olympic visitors. Two blocks from the hostel -- on the 29th floor of a luxury apartment building -- is an entirely different accommodation alternative.
"I've never, ever rented before," says 44-year-old Randall Weaver, who has decided to lease his one-bedroom condo to Olympics fans for the Games. "But I'm an entrepreneur. I thought if I could get some money out of the Olympics, then why not?"
Weaver is not the only homeowner hoping to cash in on the city's housing crunch. In the prelude to the Games, dozens of temporary-rental Web sites have sprung up listing thousands of private Vancouver homes, from sleek, high-rise condos like Weaver's to suburban houses.
"For Vancouver property owners with space to rent out, the Olympics are a mini gold rush," says Tsur Somerville, a professor at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business.
But so far, Weaver has yet to hit it big. In his sunroom, with floor-to-ceiling windows that offer panoramic views of the Vancouver skyline and the snowcapped mountains beyond, he explains that his condo has been booked for only three days. At $550 a night, however, it's enough "to help with the mortgage."
If anything, his rates are a bit on the low end. One-bedroom downtown apartments are going for an average of $4,000 a week, according to Rent for the Games, a realty agency that has booked more than 400 temporary Olympic rentals and lists another 710 properties on its Web site. Hefty prices have led some fans to raise cries of price-gouging.
"People are being asked to pay exorbitant amounts," says economist Somerville. "But we're not talking about poor people who need to eat. It's not clear to me that people flying halfway around the world can be gouged."
That is cold comfort, however, for Olympic fans still searching for an elusive bed in Vancouver.
A true Olympic die-hard from Toronto, 35-year-old Christina Wallaert, remembers not only the names of the 1988 Calgary ice dancing medalists but also the background music from their programs. After securing Olympic tickets in a lottery last June, she spent six weeks scouring the Internet before finding accommodations in a downtown condo. She won't disclose the exact price, but says it was in line with prices at other rental condos in the area.
"It's more than I've ever paid to stay anywhere else," Wallaert says. "But I think we got a very good deal."
Scalza is a freelance food and travel writer based in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics. To see more of his work, visit his website.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
