Sol Zia, executive director of the Calgary Hotel Association, said close to 70 per cent of the roughly 16,000 hotel rooms city-wide have already been booked for Stampede. He said last-minute reservations should push that number above the record 90 per cent occupancy noted during the 2022 iteration of the event — and could help the Stampede push past last year’s 1.2 million headcount.
“I think that that kind of shows sort of where folks are at,” she said, also making note of recent corporate sponsorships from WestJet as the Stampede’s “official airline” and Suncor sponsoring this year’s Stampede Parade. Additionally, Zia said hotels are seeing far more international guests than they have in recent years as COVID-19 restrictions have eased worldwide. While visitors from the U.S. continued to show up in relatively strong numbers through the latter pandemic years, guests from Europe and other far-flung origins were seldom seen between 2020 and 2022.
“Stampede week is already starting to get real busy here,” he said. “So we’re probably going to be opening some more availability as these tours fill up.”