Welcome to my new blog! I will do my best to keep you up to date with people, places, events, and facilities I visit or hear about. We will start with one a week and see how it goes.
Last week I attended the 2011 Sport Events Congress presented by the Canadian Sports Tourism Alliance. It was my first CSTA meeting in five years due to conflicts with our own sports event symposium. The meetings were held in Ottawa, Ontario…the beautiful capital city of Canada. The Westin Hotel was the site, and my room looked out on the canal and across to parliament and the rest of the major government buildings.
I have always thought the Canadian maple leaf based logo and flag to be one of the most, if not the most powerful brands in sport.
The program was full of great speakers and presentations, notably on wrap-ups of Vancouver 2010, a look ahead to the Pan Am Games in Toronto in 2015, an update from Marcel Aubut, President of the Canadian Olympic Committee, and of course my own talk at the closing luncheon: Nothing like comic relief at the end of a successful event!
I was very impressed with breakout sessions on the CSTA’s Sport Tourism Economic Assessment Model (STEAM), a web-based economic impact assessment model and another on Social Media for Sports Events (which helped push me into the blogasphere). We also heard from Mark Harrison, President of TrojanOne in Toronto. Mark’s company has worked closely with the CSTA on a number of marketing initiatives and I found his insight and understanding of our business of potential interest to the membership of NASC.
On the last evening we loaded into buses and crossed the river into Quebec to visit the new Centre multisport de Gatineau, a 200,000 square foot indoor multi-sport facility! What a building! It contains an Olympic size competition pool developed in cooperation with Swim Canada that meets or exceeds competition standards for all water sports, including a ten meter diving tower. Another section is devoted to court sports and the final major area is for gymnastics. This is a sensational facility, made all the more important by the way in which it serves the needs of residents of Gatineau, Quebec in addition to its competitive uses. One of its tenants is Volleyball Canada.
The CSTA and NASC serve very similar needs, and we are assembling an exploratory team of members from both organizations. We may be able to develop educational opportunities and encourage the growth of competition between elite athletes in a variety of sports, not to mention grass roots events.
One big issue: did you know only about 30% of all US citizens have passports? A cross border trip is a valuable civics lesson, not to mention the chance to visit outstanding attractions and cities. I am very thankful I have had opportunities to visit almost every Canadian province, and my life is richer for each trip!
In summary: great sessions, wonderful people, excellent presentations, and plenty of networking.
Kind Regards
Don
