February 2010
Current Issue

Ethics and the Olympics

Global View 

By Mariela McIlwraith, CMP, CMM, MBA

YOU WILL FACE ETHICAL DILEMMAS AT SOME POINT IN YOUR CAREER. The options available will be shades of gray or, from an environmental perspective, shades of green. Let’s explore three ethical questions facing meeting professionals in Vancouver, British Columbia, as they prepare to play hosts to the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympics Games: displacing contracted groups to accommodate the Olympics, setting hotel room rates and the games’ environmental impact.

Making Room for the Games
In order to accommodate the Olympics, some events that were scheduled to take place in Vancouver needed to be displaced. This was not something that was taken lightly by venues, which value both their contractual obligations as well as their client relationships. The exceptional circumstance of the Olympics, combined with proactive steps on the part of local venues, resulted in support and understanding from clients. Claire Smith, CMP, vice president of sales and marketing for the Vancouver Convention Centre, says that their approach was to work closely with clients through one-on-one conversations to come up with solutions. She also credits support from clients, who displayed enthusiasm for Vancouver’s successful Olympic bid as a key factor in making things work.

The Price of Gold
The demand for Vancouver and Whistler hotel rooms during the Olympics will be unprecedented. While there will certainly be rooms that will have record-setting rates during the games, this will not be the case citywide. The Olympic Bid Committee made a commitment that all rooms booked through the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) would have rate restrictions based on a formula that in part considers average corporate rates for the three years preceding the games and a reasonable premium. Mark Andrew, regional vice president of the Pacific Northwest for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts and general manager of the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver stresses that it is critical for any exchange to be a partnership. He says that there is always the potential for repeat business. Delivering exceptional experiences and conducting business fairly, including avoiding price gouging, is key to developing the types of partnerships that will provide long-tem business sustainability.

A Greener Games
The environmental impact of events—including carbon emissions—is a serious and growing concern, and increasingly, meeting professionals are addressing this issue. A VANOC innovation has been to not only manage direct emissions, but to also mitigate the indirect emissions related to the games by engaging stakeholders, including visitors and sponsors, and provide them with tools to estimate and offset emissions. University of British Columbia graduate fellow Jessica Langelaan with the Centre for Sustainability and Social Innovation at the Sauder School of Business has been working on calculating the games’ carbon footprint. The estimate, released in November, calculates the direct footprint to be 118,000 tons of carbon emissions and the indirect footprint to be an additional 150,000 tons. VANOC has joined with British Columbia-based, carbon asset management company Offsetters to help deliver a carbon neutral games.

An Olympic Finish and a New Beginning
Dave Gazley, vice president of meeting and convention sales for Tourism Vancouver and co-chairman of MPI’s 2010 World Education Congress (WEC) Host Committee, says that sustainability is moving from a conscious business decision to simply the way business is done—“a natural part, not just an item on a checklist.” As a further example, MPI and the WEC host committee are actively focused on sustainability as part of the planning process.
The 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games will be the defining event for Vancouver in our generation, and, much like the competing athletes, local meeting professionals are working with determination, precision and passion to bring the games to life. While some people will look for the places that VANOC and Vancouver meeting professionals could have done better, we have to look at all the places progress has been made, such as in communication, stakeholder engagement and incorporation of sustainability principles in business operations and build on this foundation for change.

MARIELA MCILWRAITH, CMP, CMM, MBA, is the principal of McIlwraith Consulting and specializes in corporate responsibility planning for the meeting industry. Contact her at mariela.mcilwraith@gmail.com.  

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