Ontario Resorts: More Popularity As Incentive Venues

<H1> Ontario Resorts: More Popularity As Incentive Venues</H1>By Carolyn Green

Toronto - Weary of city-center locations, Canadian and U.S. companies increasingly are choosing resorts as venues for corporate meetings or meeting and incentive combinations.

"We have certainly seen more interest in resort venues," said Grace Cherniuk, managing director of Resorts Ontario, an industry group representing some 230 Ontario resorts. "Groups find their people can be a lot more productive if they're away in a relaxed environment. Creative thinking and innovation are the key elements needed in business today, and I think there is a perception that if companies get their people outside the city into a retreat mode, they will be more successful."

Indeed, several resorts in Ontario are reporting healthy increases in convention and incentive travel business, with sales, in some cases, exceeding earlier projections.

For example, John Bullock, director of sales and marketing for Deerhurst, a four-season resort in Huntsville, Ont., projected last fall that meeting and incentive travel business would account for about 45 percent of the resort's overall business. But the year-end tally at the property, which is located about 140 miles north of Toronto, showed that meetings business represented 52 percent of sales in 1995. Projections for 1996 indicate meetings business could account for 55 percent of total sales.

Bullock, like Cherniuk, attributes the dramatic increase in meetings business to the rising number of companies that are opting for a city escape with a broad choice of both leisure activities and adequate meeting facilities.

Deerhurst, which was built in 1896 and taken over by Canadian Pacific Hotels & Resorts in 1990, offers conference organizers several pluses, including its own 3,000-foot airstrip. Although the resort can stretch the number of attendees to about 800, it can comfortably host meetings for up to 600 delegates with its 20,000 square feet of meeting space in 20 rooms of varying size and 24,000 square feet of exhibit space.

In addition to its 122 guest rooms, the property, located in a pristine setting overlooking Peninsula Lake, offers more than 200 condo suites of varying sizes and configurations.

According to Bullock, the resort's leisure activities are a key element that make Deerhurst so appealing as a meetings and incentive destination. During the summer, the resort offers water sports, golf at one of two on-site 18-hole courses, tennis, squash and racquetball. In winter, guests can choose from a broad spectrum of activities such as downhill and cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, dog sledding and tennis. The resort also has a spa, several indoor swimming pools, a fitness center and a nightclub.

"People are looking for soft adventure," Bullock said. "They have to have something that's safe but thrilling, and we have all of those things here."

While plans have not been finalized, the resort hopes to expand its meeting space and add an aquatics center, Bullock said.

Meanwhile, Deerhurst signed an agreement earlier this month with Pecos River, a Minneapolis-based company that arranges corporate team-building activities. Pecos will build and run an adult obstacle course at the Deerhurst site.

To Robert Cass, general manager of Hockley Valley Resort, a smaller property about 45 minutes north of Toronto in Orangeville, Ont., team building is a key reason why corporations have opted for resort venues.

"At a property like ours, we have them 24 hours a day and they're in a location where they're all together, so it provides that team-building atmosphere," Cass said. "People are looking at the team perspective as such a key component in business that they're trying to put people into situations where they have to be a team-and after-hours is one of those times."

With only 104 guest rooms, Hockley Valley can accommodate groups of up to 200. The resort has 16 meeting rooms of varying sizes in addition to a host of leisure amenities, including golf at its own 18-hole Scottish links golf course, a fitness center, two swimming pools, squash courts and tennis courts.

Because more than two-thirds of all sales emanate from conference business, Cass said the resort plans to add additional features that appeal to executives. Future plans include voicemail and a business center.