Homewood Suites by Hilton Surrey<\/a>, opened March 30 in the city\u2019s Health & Technology District, just north of Surrey Memorial Hospital.<\/p>\nSuch hotel openings are good news for Sarb Lidder, executive director of Surrey FC soccer club, which in March hosted the massive annual Surrey Mayor\u2019s Cup tournament for 482 youth teams in multiple divisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the Mayor\u2019s Cup we had potentially almost 1,500 room nights, and only 411 of those were spent in Surrey,\u201d Lidder told the Now-Leader.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a significant number of teams come here from different places, and we were challenged to find hotels in Surrey. A lot of people went to Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, other cities. The teams, they tell us they want to come to Surrey, play in Surrey and stay in Surrey, but can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor Brenda Locke agrees that Surrey needs additional hotel rooms to meet demand, especially during larger sports tournaments, and says more will be built.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are starting to see hotels coming forward,\u201d she noted. \u201cI\u2019ve been talking with people who build hotels and there\u2019s an interest like never before \u2014 not just for sports tourism, but for other things in our city. There is a real need, no question about it, because these events and tournaments, we want them to come to Surrey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Launched in 2015, Surrey\u2019s Sport Tourism Grant Program has attracted events by helping to offset costs for sports organizations. In 2025, grants were given for 45 events, generating an estimated $32 million in economic impact in the city.<\/p>\n
Ange Chew, executive director of Discover Surrey destination marketing organization, said Surrey not having enough hotels and hotel rooms is a challenge, \u201cand it\u2019s always been a challenge,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new Homewood Suites by Hilton just opened, so that\u2019s very encouraging now. But for this size of a city, Surrey does not have enough hotels or hotel rooms, especially for sports,\u201d Chew underlined.<\/p>\n
Surrey\u2019s hotel occupancy rate dropped last year, she noted, due to a strike at the Sheraton Vancouver Guildford property and other factors.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur hotel partners also look at other side, like, \u2018We\u2019re not 100 per cent full 100 per cent of the time, so will new hotels steal from my share of the market?\u2019 It\u2019s a balance of what to develop and where to develop.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother thing is, we don\u2019t have enough conference space,\u201d Chew added. \u201cWe have the ability to host 500 delegates and less in Surrey currently. That\u2019s not enough. A lot of events have outgrown the Agriplex (in Cloverdale), so we need that next size up, indoor space, especially in winter. The new downtown arena planned, there needs to be multi-use space (for) trade shows and conferences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Surrey FC will host U15 national club championships<\/a> at Newton Athletic Park this October, bringing dozens of soccer teams from across Canada.<\/p>\n\u201cWe have enough hotel rooms for that,\u201d Lidder confirmed. \u201cWe have all the teams staying at the Sheraton (in Guildford) along with some of the key personnel from Canada Soccer, and then the referees and team officials will stay at the Civic Hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sports tournaments on Surrey\u2019s spring 2026 calendar include Knockout Events\u2019 Sikh Heritage Month Canada Cup (combat sports, April 24 at Empress Palace Ballroom), Water Polo Canada\u2019s 16U Nationals (May 1-3 at Guildford Recreation Centre), White Rock Divers-hosted Bev Boys Invitational (May 9-10 at Grandview Heights Aquatics Centre), Coastal FC\u2019s Spring Classic soccer tournament (May 16-18 at South Surrey Athletic Park) and BC School Sports-hosted AA\/AAA ultimate disc sport provincials (May 25-26 at Newton Athletic Park).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This spring Surrey will welcome more than 9,000 athletes to eight sports tournaments for soccer, badminton, gymnastics, diving,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":{"0":"post-624486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-surrey","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-surrey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}