An opportunity to continue improvements for sport tourism locally.
Tourism Windsor Essex Pelee Island (TWEPI) hosted a Sport Tourism Meet and Greet on Wednesday afternoon at the Bull and Barrel to bring together sport rights holders and local hoteliers and businesses that cater to the sports industry.
The goal of this event, which has been held for a number of years, is to connect the local region with sport event representatives to make event planning, and hotel booking easier for the future.
The local region continues to build additional hotels to further accommodate those visiting Windsor and Essex County, including multiple new Holiday Inn's in Lakeshore, and a new boutique hotel currently being built in Tecumseh.
Jason Toner, Vice President of Marketing and Communications for TWEPI, says this event started about 10 years ago when they noticed a disconnect between sport event planners and local hotels.
"The sport planners can talk to hotels, know 'hey, this isn't a good weekend to bring that because we're already full', but also get them in the process of booking hotels earlier so that we have the best hotel room options, and that they can get the room blocks they need. So, it came out of a need from the industry of needing the support."
Toner says they have a big roster of events this year.
"HockeyFest is a big one that we're getting ready to announce, it's about 1,000 athletes. We have the Diving World Cup coming this spring as well. And then we don't diminish the value of those small, regional tournaments. I say small but some of them are 20 to 30 teams. We have those reoccurring in almost every weekend that's filling three, four, five hotels."
Brian Yeomans, Director of Sales at FHC Hotels & Resorts Inc., was in attendance.
FHC owns and operates three hotels in downtown Windsor, including Holiday Inn Express, Best Western Plus, and DoubleTree by Hilton - all located on the waterfront.
Yeomans says they're looking forward to the number of events being held this year.
"We have 620 rooms between our three hotels, so we have a lot of space to offer. A lot of the teams look for two bedded rooms, so the more of those you can find with tournaments the better."
Sport tourism ranks as a top reason for visitors in the local region as each year thousands of rooms are booked for sporting events.
Approximately 15 hotels in Windsor-Essex are a part of the Meet and Greet, and interact with sport event representatives to ensure there's space.