{"id":30955,"date":"2022-03-10T18:36:40","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T23:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=30955"},"modified":"2022-03-10T18:42:23","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T23:42:23","slug":"microtel-helps-aurora-complete-missing-pieces-of-tourism-puzzle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/microtel-helps-aurora-complete-missing-pieces-of-tourism-puzzle\/","title":{"rendered":"Microtel helps Aurora complete missing pieces of tourism puzzle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last week, Aurora marked the formal grand opening of its latest hotel, Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attended by Mayor Tom Mrakas, members of the Aurora Chamber of Commerce, and other dignitaries, the formal opening of the hotel, which is located on Goulding Avenue in the heart of the Leslie Street business lands, was heralded as a shot in the arm for local businesses and groups as they look to come out of the global pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFour short years ago, we had no hotels and now we have two \u2013 it is very exciting,\u201d said Mayor Tom Mrakas, referencing the Holiday Inn Express, which opened last year just up the street. \u201cIt\u2019s an exciting time, I think, in our Town [and] we\u2019re exploding with enthusiasm. What better way to come out of the pandemic than to have a second hotel opening! We\u2019re very excited to have you guys join the Town of Aurora and our business community in providing a wonderful service that is going to be much-needed, from a cultural aspect to our sporting community. Thank you for picking Aurora.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This enthusiasm was shared by David Donaldson of MasterBUILT hotels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based out of Calgary, this is MasterBUILT\u2019s first foray into the GTA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very excited about having this hotel open,\u201d said Donaldson. \u201cIt has been a long development cycle for us, most of that is internally in terms of the things we needed to do to get ourselves organized to come out east. We have a number of projects we\u2019re building in the eastern part of Canada and into the Maritimes. We\u2019re very excited about Aurora being the first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great community. It\u2019s nice to have 100 rooms open. This is going to be a great market for us. The construction costs, relatively speaking, came in at around $22 million [which] is a big commitment for a four-person-owned company from Calgary! We\u2019re thrilled to be able to push into the eastern market and thrilled to be here in Aurora.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Town, from a tourism perspective, is also thrilled to have another hotel open in the community \u2013 with a third now in the site plan development stage, again in the Leslie and Wellington area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a huge opportunity for our hotels, and also for our Town, to be able to promote new assets for groups and tournaments,\u201d says Lisa Hausz, Economic Development Officer for the Town of Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking down the road, Ms. Hausz says the two current hotels will become involved in sport tourism strategies through hosting tournaments, offering packages to incoming groups, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe hotels are very keen to participate in that piece,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both hotels have opened during the global pandemic, which might make it difficult to gauge metrics on how they might help the community reach its tourism goals, but that is something the Economic Development department is tackling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to know where the future is going to be,\u201d says Hausz. \u201cDo you compare [metrics] to 2019, which is a very different view, or through the pandemic? One of our best resources is Central Counties Tourism, a regional tourism office of the Province and I have tapped into their resources for exactly that kind of data. What they\u2019re going to be helping us in are the impacts for 2019, comparing 2020 and 2022, and helping us try to forecast what that could look like going forward. It\u2019s a huge resource for us since Aurora hasn\u2019t really been in the tourism business before, but now with hotels we see that opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think there is definite potential with having Niagara College and the Canadian Food & Wine Institute using the Armoury at Town Park. It is an asset that started during the pandemic and being really able to leverage that partnership in attracting a major food competition and all accessory attractions that we can get from that \u2013 it will fill hotels, it will have people in the Downtown, and it is definitely an opportunity we\u2019re looking forward to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Aurora marked the formal grand opening of its latest hotel, Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham.  Attended by Mayor Tom Mrakas, members of the Aurora Chamber of Commerce, and other dignitaries, the formal opening of the hotel, which is located on Goulding Avenue in the heart of the Leslie Street business lands, was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/2022-03-10-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-83h","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 11:15:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}