It cost $500 million but is turning heads the world over with its innovative design and elegant Calgary western heritage motif. The expanded BMO Centre held its grand opening on Friday. Doug Vaessen shows us the highlights.If the city doesn’t want to lose out on thousands of tourism dollars, the Chamber of Commerce says it needs up to 3,000 more hotel rooms to meet an expected influx of visitors attending future conferences at the BMO Centre.
“We need to create between 2,500 to 3,000 more rooms to address this scarcity,” Yedlin said. “If this shortage is not addressed, we will not realize the full potential of what the BMO Centre expansion represents as it could result in more than 100,000 lost night stays by 2031.” Calgary Hotel Association’s Sol Zia echoes those sentiments, saying the expansion is wonderful for the city’s tourism industry, but more hotels are critically needed for a city that only has around 15,000 hotel rooms for 1.2 million square feet of convention space.Bank of Canada rate cut is ‘going to matter in people’s pocketbooks.’ Here’s whyMore importantly, there’s only about 5,000 hotel rooms in the city’s core where the delegates would want to stay to be close to the conference centres.