The exterior of the Medicine Hat Travelodge is pictured on Thursday, September 26, 2019. The Medicine Hat Accommodation Association says hotels in the city will be at capacity as the city hosts a Jehovah's Witnesses convention from June 19-21, 2020. - Photo by Charles Lefebvre

By Charles Lefebvre

Hotel booking

Majority of hotel rooms already booked for Jehovah’s Witnesses convention next year

Sep 26, 2019 | 11:27 AM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — If you’re looking to book a hotel room for the third week of June next year, the Medicine Hat Accommodation Association says you need to start booking right now.

With the City of Medicine Hat preparing to host a Jehovah’s Witnesses convention from June 19-21, Elisha Ammann, the executive director of the Medicine Hat Accommodation Association, says 85 per cent of available hotel rooms in the city have already been booked for the three-day event.

“That is unprecedented,” she said on Thursday. “We have many events that happen in Medicine Hat, sports tournaments, festivals, special events that happen all the time, and it’s pretty rare you get that quantity of bookings that far prior to an event.

“Most events, you know, around 30 days out, and all of the bookings are finalized. For us to be fully booked up in September for an event that’s happening in June is awesome.”

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The city is expecting between 4,000 and 5,000 people to attend the convention, coming from across southern Alberta, southern British Columbia and Saskatchewan. The convention expected to have a $2.6 million economic impact for the city.

Ammann says the city has approximately 1,500 hotel rooms available, and hotel owners are already preparing for the influx of visitors.

“For an event of this size and this nature, it’s going to be a large undertaking, because it’s many families travelling, similar to teams that tend to be two to four people in a room,” she said. “It’s different from a single, corporate traveller.

“Not only are they going to have to be prepared for that booking process, knowing we were going to get that large quantity of bookings right away, but when the guests are coming, they need to make sure they have extra food on hand for the breakfast bar, that they have extra housekeeping staff because the rooms are going to be full, all the beds are being used, all the towels are being used. It’s a lot of planning, definitely, when we have these large groups come in.”

Ammann adds the hotel owners are looking at the conference as a chance to showcase Medicine Hat.

“We really look at it as an opportunity to show off what great service we have, what things we have in Medicine Hat, so hopefully those visitors stay that extra night, or return back to our city for another trip,” she said.