Saxony House in Vancouver closes its doors after great success

Dresden/Vancouver, March 1st 2010 – Saxony House as part of the XXI. Olympic Winter Games 2010 in Vancouver has closed its doors on Sunday evening after 17 Olympic days and looks back on a very successful time. With 34.000 guests "Germany Saxony House", as the Canadian hosts used to call the Saxon domicile in the Vancouver Rowing Club, became one of the most popular meeting points for many Olympic athletes from Saxony and all of Germany as well as numerous prominent guests from the worlds of politics, economy, culture and media. Thus, the Winter Games of Vancouver represent another success for the Tourismus Marketing Gesellschaft Sachsen (TMGS) in promoting Saxony abroad.

"The concept to make the state of Saxony accessible to the Canadians by means of typical culture, music, specialties and hospitality was successful. Whoever visited Saxony House has a particular notion of Saxony in Germany now ", said TMGS managing director and chief of the house Hans-Jürgen Goller during the final event on Sunday evening in Vancouver. Certainly, the number of visitors was smaller than in Turin due to the capacity of the location, but it exceeded the former calculation of 20.000 visitors by 75 percent. The sale of beer and the popular fried sausage from the Ore Mountains was much higher than four years ago.

The Free State, the TMGS, the sponsors and the team of 25 people from Saxony contributed to the successful fulfillment of the task assigned by the Saxon State government to present Saxony as innovative business location, successful land of sports and attractive travel destination.

Thus, from high noon till 2 o'clock in the morning the guests experienced a brilliant program without entrance charge – from a corporate video on Saxony's cultural and scenic particularities developed specially for the Canadian and international audience, live music with "De Erbschleicher" from the Ore Mountains and hot DJ sounds to Saxon specialties like fried sausage, crusted roast, game dishes and Wernesgrüner beer. Also waiting times lasting up to two or three hours were accepted. But the Saxon representation in Vancouver was also a prefect platform for official dates.

One of these was the signing of the contract of a world-wide so far unique cooperation for the exchange of cultural assets between the State Art Collections Dresden and the U'mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay on February 19. Participants were Saxony's Prime Minister Stanislaw Tillich, Prof. Martin Roth, general director of the State Art Collections Dresden and Bill Cranmer, Chief of the 'Namgis First Nation`, one of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations from Canada. Saxony House furthermore experienced a great media response and was central meeting point for national and international, mainly Canadian, journalists.

The TMGS has scheduled a press conference for March 9, the day before the opening of the International Tourism Fair Berlin, during which stock is to be taken of Saxony House in Vancouver.

Contact: Tourismus Marketing Gesellschaft Sachsen, Press and PR, Ines Nebelung, Bautzner Straße 45 – 47, D-01099 Dresden, Tel.: +49 (0)351-4917025, presse.tmgs@sachsen-tour.de, www.sachsen-tourismus.de, www.sachsen-in-vancouver-2010.com


Aljona Savchenko


DJ Ron Spanks


Harbor and Vancouver silhouette


Ingo Steuer, Aljona-Savchenko and Robin-Szolkowy


Ingo-Steuer, Aljona-Savchenko, Robin-Szolkowy, Klaus-Herrmann