Months before the German National Soccer Team would begin defense of its title at the 1994 FIFA World Cup in the US, the team's head coach, Berti Vogts, scouted locations that would closely mimic the conditions they would find in the city of Chicago, where they would be based during the group stage of the tournament.
Vogts came upon a small south central Ontario resort that happened to have a soccer pitch on the property; reaching out to the owners, he asked if they could install a second soccer field in time for his team's pre-tournament training camp. Drawing on their origins as a sod business, the innkeepers agreed and laid down a second pitch – and the Nottawasaga Inn has been hosting international soccer organizations ever since.
In the town of Alliston, about a 90-minute drive north from Toronto, the Nottawasaga Inn Resort & Conference Centre has 269 hotel rooms, 34 meeting rooms, two NHL-sized hockey rinks, and two FIFA-regulation soccer pitches. Over the past 32 years, ever since that first visit of the German National Team, Nottawasaga has hosted a slew of soccer organizations, including Canadian National Men's and Women's teams, representative squads from Portugal, Australia, and the US, as well as Italian club teams Parma and Frosinone.
"The players are so accustomed to planes and buses. The more relaxed they can be here, the better it is for them."
This year, ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup (jointly hosted by Canada, the US, and Mexico), the National Team of Panama secured the resort as their base camp for a three-week period before and during the tournament. Panama's set to play two of its three group stage games at Toronto's BMO Field (it will be known simply as Toronto Stadium throughout the World Cup as per FIFA’s requirement that all World Cup host venues drop corporate sponsor names during the tournament).
That one decision in 1994, laying sod for a German soccer coach, has shaped Nottawasaga's business in ways nobody planned for.
Nottawasaga has hosted a slew of sports teams over the last three decades.Mark Yuen
"If you look at all 48 [World Cup] base camps between Canada, the US, and Mexico, I think there's only one other, besides us, where you can stay in the hotel and walk onto the field," says Dino Biffis, Nottawasaga's Vice President. "The players are so accustomed to planes and buses. The more relaxed they can be here, the better it is for them. There are fewer distractions. We hear the same message from every international team that comes in."
Sylvia Biffis, the resort's Director of Sales (and, yes, Dino's sister), sees it the same way.
"We're a conference centre, but we've become known as a sports training facility," she says. "We have amenities for hockey and soccer, but we also host dance competitions, Skate Canada, the Canadian junior golf association comes in every year. We're a full-service resort that happens to have a soccer field on site."
Only one other facility in the world – a training centre in Valencia, Spain – has a similar profile.
"We're very unique in Ontario because there's no other resort that has [hockey] arenas and soccer fields on site," Sylvia says. "A lot have golf, but they don't have the additional amenities. We've become a sports training resort and, at the same time, we do corporate [events] during the week, so we're pretty versatile."
According to Sport Tourism Canada, sport tourism is the fastest growing segment of the tourism industry in Canada, with approximately $7.4 billion in annual spending by domestic and international visitors. While word of mouth drove international soccer teams to Nottawasaga in the mid to late '90s, the resort now actively recruits organizations and relies on the sport's national governing body to help with that recruitment.
"Canada Soccer has been a fantastic partner," says Sylvia. "We've had many teams come just to scout the pitch. [English Premier League club] Manchester United came twice when they were touring across the United States and Canada. We're always top of mind if any pro team comes into the city."
Dino credits the resort's geography as much as its amenities. "There are limited facilities that have what we have," he says. "Generally speaking, it depends on how long teams will stay in Toronto. If they're staying for more than a couple of days, they're looking at coming this way."
Hosting 60-plus elite athletes alongside regular guests for three weeks sounds complicated, but at this point, it's old hat. "We have a system," says Sylvia. "We'll dedicate one or two private floors to them. One of our configurations allows them to go from their rooms to private meeting and dining spaces. They would only come down to the lobby to go to the fields."
Her brother's equally unfazed by the challenge. "We put them in an area that keeps them isolated from regular guests and our business goes on," says Dino. "There might be a time when they're making their way on and off the field that we'll see more security. After those movements, it's pretty much business as usual."
Siblings Sylvia and Dino Biffis have a well-organized system for hosting sports teams at the resort.Mark Yuen
FIFA required all 48 base camps to use the same grass as the 16 host city stadiums, so Nottawasaga basically overhauled their field. "We ripped out the old field, put in new sod, regraded our field, and improved the drainage. We did all this over the winter," says Dino. "We put down FIFA-approved sod, a proprietary mix of Kentucky bluegrass, the same grass being used throughout all the northern cities in the US. Outside of our normal course of business, that was the biggest thing we've had to do with any other international team."
"The extra dollars and cents you put into your infrastructure and your facility comes back in the long term."
Sports tourism has now woven itself into every part of Nottawasaga's calendar, with a whole slew of sport organizations and their guests coming in for golf or hockey tournaments, soccer events, dance competitions, and what-have-you.
"We've become known for sports tourism," Sylvia says. "That is something most resorts don't delve into. You realize over time what the revenue is to host those type of groups, especially if you can get them during your off season. It makes a difference."
Says Dino: "The extra dollars and cents you put into your infrastructure and your facility comes back in the long term."
Thirty-two years ago, a German soccer coach asked for a favour, and an Ontario family agreed. Because of that one decision, Panama is now just the latest in a long line of teams that have found their way to Alliston. The Nottawasaga Inn may not have set out to build a business around international sports tourism, but by continuing to say yes, the business has followed.
