We’re now a week away from Juno Madness. I’ve been hearing different numbers , but it sounds like anywhere from 2000 – 5000 will be descending on St. John’s with music on their minds. But that’s actually not that many more than a summer cruise ship would bring, which might help to put everything in perspective.
When I talked to Chris Kearney a couple weeks ago, he said that The Junos wouldn’t be changing anything, really, but they would be bringing the summer rush up by about two weeks. This Week, Delta Hotel manager Doug Loucks said pretty much the same thing.
“Usually we’d be doing our summer hiring and training starting pretty soon, but this year we did all of the hiring at the end of March,” he said. “Every summer we have 30-50 new hires for the summer season, and we’re just training them now.”
The Delta is sold out Thursday – Sunday of next week. CARAS booked blocks of room back when they decided St. John’s was going to be host city, and then there are the people going to the broadcast event to think about too.
“There will be challenges, taking care of high profile guests and regular guests, but that’s really what we do,” said Loucks. “We’ve been meeting as a core operational team to figure out serving hours, people flow, and all that.”
“People flow” will be a big deal at the Delta. The ballroom is one of the bigger Juno venues, so hotel staff will have to worry about revelers getting out of hand, in addition to keeping the musicians happy.
Is the hotel ready to deal with trashed rooms and bizarre requests for football helmets full of cottage cheese? Well yes and no. “We’re ready,” said Loucks, “with any event like this there’s a sense of realism, but musicians are just people. The biggest thing is having the type of tea they like. And they’ll be treated like any other guests.”
Fortis (which owns the Delta) is a Platinum Level sponsor of the Junos, but Loucks said that filling up was never the point. “Both Fortis and the Delta appreciate the community we live in and sponsor many events. This one just happens to be higher profile than most.”
That said, the Junos do present a good opportunity to the Delta and other members of Destination St. John’s a private company that sells St. John’s as, well, a destination. “We’ll have a lot of high profile guests here, it’ll be a great opportunity to sell the city!” said Loucks.
