Housing Scarce, Costly for ’88 Winter Games

CALGARY, Alberta —  Organizers of the Calgary Winter Olympics refer to it as “the G-word” -- G for gouge. They don’t like to hear it spoken, but they know it’s going on, especially in Calgary hotel rooms.

The city of 600,000 is faced with the monumental task of finding accommodation for the estimated 100,000 visitors expected to attend the 16-day Winter Games which open Feb. 13.

“I would never hold out any hope for anyone who wants to come and stay in a downtown first-rate hotel,” says Myrene Hayes of the Calgary Olympic Housing Bureau. “They went three years ago.”

Half of the 12,000 hotel rooms in the Calgary area were immediately scooped up by the so-called “Olympic family” -- the thousands of government dignitaries, media personnel and corporate insiders who always seem to grab the best tickets and rooms before they’re offered to the public.

Hotel rooms in Calgary are occasionally becoming available as old reservations are canceled, but the Housing Bureau says requests received in early January are now being placed in Banff, over an hour away from Calgary.

Rooms at the Calgary’s Flamingo Hotel which normally go for the equivalent of about $24 ($32 Canadian) are being rented to Olympic visitors for $135 ($180 Cdn) a night.

“This isn’t price gouging,” said Flamingo manager Nick Jessa. “If the demand is there and people are willing to pay that much, then we should be able to sell the rooms. It’s better than driving (two hours) from (the towns of) Red Deer or Lethbridge every day.”

Hayes says the Olympic Housing Bureau has booked people in hotels as far away as 180 miles from Calgary, but she insists most hotels are not gouging.

“Please, we never use the G-word,” Hayes says. “Most of the good Calgary hotels have have signed contracts with OCO (the Olympic Organizing Committee) which prevent them from raising their prices more than 10 percent over peak rates during the Games. But all those rooms went long ago.”

John Varga, project manager of the Housing Bureau says, “We haven’t had many complaints about prices. If we had any complaints it’s that they had to take a longer stay, but even that’s gone now. If you want a room for two days, you can get it now.”

Housing officials stress, however, there are still ways of finding accommodation without paying fantastic markups for second-rate rooms.

Hundreds of Calgary homeowners have decided to leave town for the duration of the Games and offer their homes for rent to Olympic tourists. The Housing Bureau has inspected all applicants and is renting them out at about $1,950 ($2,600) per week.

For people looking for more modest accommodation, the bureau offers a “Homestay” program -- a bed and breakfast plan without the breakfast.

“We have about 1,500 homes involved in the program,” Hayes says. “Everyone of them has been inspected and the price is the same for each, $50 a night for single or double accommodation.”

(Phone number for the Olympic Housing Bureau: 403-262-6630).