Smart Meetings

For starters, contact Tourism Calgary (www.tourismcalgary.com), which has a professional staff to work with meeting planners at no cost, providing a full range of services. Ask for their meeting planners guide. The city’s venues can accommodate as few as 24 or as many as 18,000 delegates, with approximately 130,000 sq. ft. of meeting space and 389,000 sq. ft. of trade show space. There are close to 11,000 guest rooms in Calgary, more than 4,000 of which are in the downtown core.

For starters, contact Tourism Calgary (tourismcalgary.com), which has a professional staff to work with meeting planners at no cost, providing a full range of services. Ask for their meeting planners guide. Calgary’s TELUS Convention Centre (calgary-convention.com) offers more than 200,000 sq. ft. of meeting and exhibit space, 34 breakout rooms and a 20,000-square-foot ballroom. It is connected to three four-star properties with 1,100 combined rooms.

The 193-acre Calgary Stampede Park (calgarystampede.com), a few blocks from downtown’s center, is the home of the Calgary Stampede, where every July, it’s a whirlwind of rodeos, chuck wagon dinners, blacksmith competitions and other activities. During the rest of the year, many of the Stampede’s facilities can be rented for events and meetings. The Calgary Stampede has “over 450,000 square boots of space,” including the impressive Roundup Center, with nearly 400,000 sq. ft.

The Roundup is home to the Corral, a large venue frequently used for ice shows, circuses, concerts and rodeos. The Corral has seating for nearly 6,500, as well as 17,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space. The “Big Four,” another large facility, includes a dining room, lounge and the Stampede Casino. Other venues include the Rotary House, Agriculture Building and Boyce Theatre.

Got some city slickers that need to be shaped up? Located an hour northwest of Calgary, the Bar C Ranch (bar-c.com) offers groups a taste of the ranch life, Canadian Rockies style. On forty thousand acres of trees, meadows, and rolling hills, guests can ride the trails, check cattle, tend horses and enjoy wagon rides and camp fires with the local cowboys. The Bar C Ranch has 34 log cabins, each with its own wood-burning fireplace; guests can get down to business in a private, on-site conference room for up to 60 people. A full restaurant and saloon can be used by larger groups. Roping, tug-of-war, and other ranch-style events can be used as teambuilding programs. May and June are cattle branding months, for those looking for a hard-core cowboy experience.

About two hours south of Calgary is the Bloomin Inn ( bloomin-inn.com/retreats.htm), where “lucky” guests can help out with the chores, like collecting eggs, rounding up pigs and other memorable experiences. The Bloomin Inn sits on a homey family farm, with a country store, cottage, cattle, geese, pigs and an on-site workshop that can be divided into three 1,000 square-foot areas for up to 40 people (E-I-E-I-O).

Getting There

Calgary International Airport - is a medium-sized airport that serves Calgary, Alberta, Canada and the surrounding region. It is the fourth-busiest airport in Canada by passenger traffic, serving 10.1 million passengers in 2005, and offers scheduled daily nonstop flights to major cities in Europe, the United States, Central America, and Canada.

Calgary's Light Rail Transit (calgarytransit.com) commuter train runs within the immediate downtown area for no charge, every five minutes during rush hour and every 15 minutes during non-rush hour.