Canadian Sports Tourism Alliance Conference in Ottawa Mar 19 to 21st
Sport Events Congress 2019 – Tuesday, March 19th to Thursday, March 21st (Ottawa)
We are considering whether the CFC will be participating in this event. Given the very successful experience in 2018 when the Congress took place in Halifax, Nova Scotia we would like to have some input from chess organizers to direct our efforts with respect to the cities which we will be talking to. Last year, a few days before I left for the conference, I spoke to Vadim Tsypin, who asked me about how receptive we would be to a bid from Mississauga for the Canadian Youth Chess Championship and Canadian Open. After expressing our consideration that such a bid would be welcomed, we got on planes and flew to Halifax. We had appointments for the speed dating portion of the conference where we had 25 communities signed up to meet us. Mississauga was not on the list but I did happen to meet someone in the sport tourism office for Mississauga in one of the breakout sessions (on the topic of raising sponsorship funds) and it did lead to some significant sponsorship for the successful Mississauga bid for CYCC and the Canadian Open. This year we have more control over the communities that we meet with. This can be a blessing and a curse.
Why would we not participate? Last year was successful so the number of available chess events is actually somewhat smaller than last year. For the board of directors, the worrisome events are the Canadian Open and Canadian Closed both Open and Women's. The CYCC/Canadian Open is locked up for 2019 (Regina) and 2020 (Mississauga), while the Canadian Closed events are locked up 2019 through 2022 (Kingston). Last year we were sponsored by the CSTA and received free flights, free hotel and free entry into the conference. This year it seems we actually will have to invest some of our own money to pay for all of those things. For me, the downside of attending is that it will wipe out most of my chess lessons for the week. I can mitigate this to some extent because we are still two months away and some lessons might be rescheduled but some won't be able to be rescheduled. The last time we found that the Canadian chess organizer community was not well positioned to absorb all the opportunities that we uncovered. Obviously, most of the tournaments can only be held in one community in each calendar year. If you have a hankering to do something big or medium-sized, let us know and we will see if there is an opportunity with your local community/hotels/tourism bureau.
