The 2034 Winter Olympics are just more than a decade away.
And already there are blocks of hotel rooms in the Park City area essentially booked for the Games that year.
Months before the International Olympic Committee is poised to formally award Salt Lake City the Games of 2034, the organization mounting the bid for the event has secured commitments from lodging properties across northern Utah for the Olympic period. Six properties in the Park City area had reached agreements with the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games by late December. The agreements highlight the importance of the community to the staging of the Games, but they also serve as another early marker in the broader planning effort in anticipation of a second Olympics in the state.
The Park City-area lodging properties that have reached agreements with the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games:
- AC Hotel Park City
- Best Western Plus Landmark Inn
- DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Park City – The Yarrow
- Hyatt Place Park City
- Park City Peaks Hotel
- Sheraton Park City
An additional five lodging properties in nearby Wasatch County, including the Homestead Resort, have also reached agreements.
“We’re not done,” said John Sindelar, who is the accommodations adviser for the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games.
The International Olympic Committee in late November invited the capital city into another phase of the discussions about staging the Games in 2034 and labeled Salt Lake City the preferred host. The awarding of the Games of 2030 and those of 2034 is anticipated in July, just before the Summer Olympics open in Paris.
The Park City area is crucial to the plans, with Park City Mountain, Deer Valley Resort and the Utah Olympic Park identified as important competition venues. The community would also be critical to the transportation, security and celebration planning. Soldier Hollow in Wasatch County is also identified on the competition map.
Sindelar provides a unique background as the committee seeking the Games prepares for the likelihood of transforming into an organizing committee as soon as the summer. He spent six years working for the organizing committee that put on the Games of 2002 in Salt Lake City, rising director of accommodations then.
The current work has secured more than 19,000 rooms for the Olympic period in 2034 as well as the same number of rooms for the time of the Winter Olympics of 2030, which are expected to be awarded to the French Alps region but were earlier seen as a possibility for Salt Lake City. The agreements between the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games and the lodging properties stretch for up to 33 nights, covering the 17 nights of the Olympics, 14 nights immediately prior to the opening ceremonies and two nights following the close of the Games.
“We become an attractive option for the hotels,” he said, particularly highlighting the 33-night bookings.
The more than 19,000 rooms are mostly within traditional hotels. The rooms would be set aside for the International Olympic Committee, sports federations, national Olympic committees, sponsors and the media. Sindelar said the lodging properties as part of the agreements were required to commit at least 60% of the rooms to the Games, saying the benchmark is the equivalent of an average of 100 rooms per participating hotel across the Olympic region. He said the agreements that have been reached encompass, on average, 80% of the rooms in the properties.
The Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games agreed to pay higher rates as the individual properties committed more rooms, he said. The rates will be set by a formula relying on the base rate for the individual properties, an inflationary component and the premium that is based on the number of rooms that were committed. The actual rates would not be finalized until 2031.
The committee approached every hotel in Park City and surrounding Summit County with at least 50 rooms and a rating of at least two stars.
Sindelar said it is unclear whether the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games will reach agreements with a significant number of additional local properties. He said some lodging properties have indicated they are “going their own way” during an Olympics and do not intend to sign agreements with the committee. There is also a limited number of properties in the Park City area that fit the minimum 50-room, two-star criteria, he said, describing the lodging industry as weighted toward condominiums and condominium hotels, which tend to involve separate ownership of the units, rather than traditional hotels.
The rooms the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games is securing in the Park City area account for a small percentage of those available throughout the various segments of the lodging industry. There are hotels across the ratings spectrum that have opted against signing an agreement while the committee did not tap other segments in the lodging industry outside of traditional hotels. The hotels that reached agreements with the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games, meanwhile, kept some of their rooms out of the deals, Sindelar said.
“There is still plenty of lodging out there,” he said as he described the eventual availability for the Olympic crowds. “The condos and Airbnbs.”