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Whistler’s Future Post 2010 Olympics
Posted by: sydneystoneman | October 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment
What is going on with Whistler? Have the Olympics helped or hurt? According to Paul Andrew’s who is involved with Crankworkx, a biking event that takes place every summer “Whistler is expensive, it’s overbuilt, and — not insignificantly for those of us who remember its distant hippie past as a rustic backwater — it’s sold its soul. Any local will tell you so.”
This mountain was essentially created in 1966, led by Franz Wilhelmsen, to host a winter Olympics. Now that it’s ended, Whistler is left in this unidentified state. The estimated jump in tourism that the Olympics were supposedly going to bring did not take place. It turns out it was just a temporary high. The year to date hotel occupancy rate in Whistler at the end of June was recorded at 59.3 percent, which was lower than the 61.8 percent rate for recession-plagued 2009, said Mark Heron, chairman of the Hotel Association at Whistler. Values of Real estate have been dramatically declining, thanks to the overbuilding taken place for the Olympics, investors and homeowners’ investments at Whistler are in a unknown state. It was hoped that the Games would help restore these level, but unfortunately it does not look that way.
Sources:
Sources:
POSTMEDIA NEWS AUGUST 14, 2010
http://www.timescolonist.com/sports/Olympics+didn+help+Whistler+tourism+rate/3399021/story.html#ixzz11FN7P8k3