Making lemonade from summer lemons

Hoteliers have always been great ones for taking lemons and making lemonade. This summer, they made the most of the Toronto garbage strike and the BC forest fires by offering special deals, responding with what we think is a traditional Canadian helping hand.

The Holiday Inn at Toronto’s International Airport got top marks for innovation during the Toronto civic workers strike. It is located in Etobicoke, the one section of Toronto that received garbage pickup because its services are contracted out. The Holiday Inn offered local guests an added incentive for summer bookings: “Book the ‘Staycation’ package at the Holiday Inn and take advantage of the hotel’s waste disposal service.” For the duration of the strike, this Holiday Inn location took two bags of guests’ household waste per reservation upon arrival.

“We recognize the anxiety Torontonians are experiencing with the garbage situation and the civic strike in general. This is a great service for travellers from the GTA wanting to leave such worries behind for a few days,” said Hughena Walsh, director of sales and marketing. “We understand the inconvenience the city strike is creating for Torontonians, and we are happy to help in any way that we can.”

As an additional benefit, despite the closure of city pools by the striking workers, families could cool off by taking advantage of the hotel’s indoor and outdoor saltwater pools.
The Delta Chelsea in downtown Toronto also rose to the challenge, offering its day camp, dubbed Camp Chelsea, for parents who needed daycare due to closure of city run programs. The camp, which ran from 9:00 am until 5:30 pm, provided supervised activities including behind-the-scenes tours, arts and crafts, bounce castles and swimming in the hotel pool. The cost to parents was $50 a day for the first child, and $25 for each additional child.

The Sun Peaks resorts northeast of Kamloops, BC offered free accommodation to West Kelowna families who had been forced out of their homes by a huge forest fire July 20.
That offer was extended by a group of seven hotels located in Sun Peaks, which ranks as one of the largest winter resorts in the BC interior. It has a capacity of 7,000 beds. The participating hotels included Nancy Greene’s Cahilty Lodge, Delta Sun Peaks, Delta Residences, Hearthstone Lodge, Sun Peaks Lodge, Heffley Boutique Inn and Coast Sundance Lodge.

Christopher Nicolson, president of Tourism Sun Peaks, said he was highly familiar with what thousands of Kelowna evacuees were going through because the resort operators were evacuated during the forest fires that hit the area in 2003.

While the provincial emergency program provides accommodation for disasters like forest fires, this situation was exceptional, Nicolson explained to CLN. The evacuation order for West Kelowna was for 11,000 people, more than the combined Kelowna and Vernon markets could accommodate.

Sun Peaks is located about two hours and 45 minutes by road from the Kelowna airport. It is also located about 45 minutes northeast of Kamloops.

The tourism association and local hotels had a meeting to discuss free rates for evacuees. “We got the group together, they were on board instantly and it was the shortest meeting we ever had,” Nicolson said.

“We did have some families that stayed with us as a result, for a couple of days on average. Some were evacuated. Some were safe in Kelowna, but needed to escape the smoke for respiratory reasons,” Nicolson said.

“It gave the evacuees a chance to get away from the smoke into a different environment from what they would have had if they stayed in Kelowna.

“The people with respiratory problems had a chance to get out of the city, to breathe a little better,” he added.

Would the Kelowna hotels do it again? “I think so,” said Nicolson. “The reaction here was very strong.”

— Colleen Isherwood, Editor