You will want to hurry and book your hotel room if you are hoping to stay in Moose Jaw for the BKT World Men’s Curling Championship from March 29 to April 6.
Only select rooms, if any, are still available as hotels are filling up. Visitors are expected from across the globe, with teams from 13 nations competing.
David Wood, president of Visit Moose Jaw, said this event is going to be huge for the hospitality sector.
“It means a tremendous amount. We actually have a plan if we can’t find a way to measure the specific economic impact of this for the benefit of future events when we’re analyzing future events, because these are tremendous 10 days when every hotel room in the city will be filled for certain,” said Wood.
Curling Canada estimates that up to 60,000 people will attend the world championship throughout the week.
Wood talked about the benefits of sports tourism and how it can attract people to return to the city.
“Sports tourism brings people to the city for the first time. If you want to come to the men’s curling, you have to come to Moose Jaw, and then you get people here, they enjoy it, and we show them the great things there are to do that they don’t have time to do right now because they’re here for curling. And they come back,” Wood explained.
This isn’t Moose Jaw’s first kick at the can when it comes to major curling events. It hosted the Scotties Tournament of Hearts women’s national championship in 2015 and 2020.
Wood said hosting the Scotties was a great learning experience for the hospitality sector.
“I remember the 2015 Scotties. There were big, long lines outside all of the restaurants and places to eat because, I guess, we weren’t quite ready, or we thought we were ready, but we weren’t quite ready. Then in 2020, we carried it off much better. Everybody was ready, and they knew what was coming. So now, I think we know what’s coming,” he said.
The BKT World Men’s Curling Championship gets underway on March 29 at the Temple Gardens Centre with the first draw at 2 p.m., featuring Brad Jacobs’ Team Canada taking on Japan.
Tickets are still available at sasktix.ca. You can also find the entire draw schedule here.