Filling hotel suites and restaurant seats, the Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend, held May 23 – 24 this year, brings economic spinoffs to downtown businesses to the tune of $14.8 million. One of the busiest weekends for businesses in the city, the race produces $14.8 million in economic activity in Ottawa and $32.3 million in the province, according to the Canadian Sport Tourism Alliance.
About 45 per cent of the runners – 36,683 people – come from outside of the National Capital Region for the event, with about 85 per cent of those people spending at least one night in Ottawa. Close to 50,000 are expected to take part in the 2015 races and the resulting economic spinoffs help out Centretown businesses.
Richard Brouse, owner of the Gilmour Inn in Centretown, says the weekend marks the start of his busiest season. While his bed and breakfast tends to book up mid-April to mid-November with tourists, race weekend bookings start as early as January.
Brouse has owned bed and breakfasts in the city for almost 20 years and says the race weekend has always been busy.
“It’s usually the same guests that are coming back year after year. Now, I don’t get any calls because pretty much everyone is booked,” Brouse says. “But once you get into May, then you’ll get the odd straggler where this is probably their first marathon and they don’t realise just how busy it is.”
Restaurant owner John Payne agrees that runners know how busy the city gets and said some teams and clubs have started booking reservations two months in advance at his Italian restaurant, Carmello’s, on Sparks Street.
“The Saturday night before the big race and the Sunday morning. It’s bigger than Mother’s Day, it’s bigger than New Year’s Eve, it’s a jam-packed weekend,” Payne says. “It actually is one of our busiest nights of the year.”
Payne attributes some of the traffic at his restaurant to their close proximity to the event. The races start and end downtown and the restaurant is located just across the street from the Marriott Hotel where many of the runners stay.
Carmello’s seats about 135 people and sometimes more if the weather is nice enough for the patio to open, according to Payne. But he says the real draw to the restaurant is the carbohydrate-filled menu.
“A lot of it has to do with us being an Italian restaurant so the runners on Saturday night are carbing up before the big race Sunday morning,” Payne says.
However, the crowds aren’t adding money to all businesses. Yoav Dvaja, owner of Bread and Sons, says the race weekend feels like any other weekend, perhaps even slower.
“There’s always parades or fairs, but I don’t think they affect businesses much, unless they’re hotels,” he says. “I actually don’t like it when they block the streets. It takes away our regular customers when the streets are closed.”
Closed streets may leave some businesses without the economic boost runners are bringing to Ottawa, but millions of dollars invested into the city’s economy is still pretty good.