Courtesy Vancouver International Airport

The Welcome Poles at the Vancouver International Airport.

This summer, one person will get paid to live out what would be most travelers’ worst nightmare: 80 days – and nights – stuck at the airport.

Canada’s Vancouver International Airport (YVR) turns 80 this July, and to celebrate, the airport authority is holding a contest to pick one person who will live onsite for 80 days and create short daily videos, post updates on Facebook and Twitter and provide other reports about their experience.

There should be plenty of stories to tell. The airport, which sits on an island, is the size of a small city, serves more than 16.8 million passengers a year and is a workplace for more than 23,000 people.

In addition to witnessing the everyday activities at the airport and the dramas surrounding the coming and going of passengers, the contest winner will get a behind-the-scenes pass. That will allow them, for example, to find out what happens to fresh fruit, frozen fish and misplaced suitcases; how the airport cares for its pair of breeding wolf eels; how many Cuban cigars are sold at the airport liquor store; and where all the stuff at the airport thrift store comes from. 

While the contest winner won’t be allowed to leave the airport and its Sea Island home, they won’t exactly be roughing it. They’ll get an honorarium of about $15,000, a daily stipend for meals and necessities, video and editing equipment and a room at the onsite Fairmont Vancouver Airport Hotel, which overlooks the airfield and has a fitness club and spa and its own honey-producing bees. Sea Island is home to a small town and there are beaches, parks, and bike paths to explore as well.

Beyond the one-week writer-in-residence stint author Alain de Botton did at London’s Heathrow Airport in the summer of 2009, Rebecca Catley, YVR’s director of communications, knows of no other airport that has invited someone to live there for 80 days. “We first thought we wanted to have someone live here for a year, but we realize that’s too much of a commitment," said Catley. "It’s our 80th anniversary, and 80 days had a better ring to it.”

Sound like something you’d like to do? To apply to be the airport’s Live@YVR reporter, you’ll need to submit a short sample video by July 18, 2011, be a Canadian-born citizen living in British Columbia and, according to the list of entry requirements, “be generally awesome.”

The public will get to vote on a list of finalists and the winner will move in to the airport on Aug. 17. Entry requirements and more details are here.

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Find more by Harriet Baskas on Stuck at The Airport.com and follow her on Twitter.