Small communities in southwest B.C. will have fewer dollars to promote tourism thanks to a shakeup that has gutted funding to the Vancouver, Coast and Mountains Tourism Region (VCMTR) and forced the organization to lay off 12 staff.
The province’s tourism marketing organization, Destination British Columbia, will stop giving VCMTR $1 million annually to market the region when the current fiscal year ends on March 31, 2015.
“It leaves small organizations such as ourselves out of the picture,” Tourism Bowen Island chairman Murray Atherton told Business in Vancouver.
He said VCMTR organized marketing campaigns that involved smaller communities such as Bowen Island, Pemberton and the Hells Gate-Boston Bar area.
The campaigns helped businesses in southwest B.C. located outside the boundaries of large, city-specific tourism marketing organizations such as Tourism Whistler, Tourism Vancouver and Tourism Richmond.
“Some small organizations in Vancouver that may not have been able to afford membership in Tourism Vancouver were also able to buy into different programs through VCMTR, and they did because there were no membership dues. Now, they’re also totally out of luck.”
But Destination BC CEO Marsha Walden told BIV that cutting VCMTR’s budget is part of a strategy to end what she called “inefficiency” and “overlapping roles” among tourism organizations. Consultation with industry alerted Walden to duplication between VCMTR and organizations such as Tourism Vancouver, the Canadian Tourism Commission and Destination BC.
Walden said she heard from industry that “there’s blurred lines of responsibility and pretty fragmented marketing. Industry is saying there’s an issue, not just with the regional tourism organizations, but with all the destination marketing organizations in the system in that there’s a lot of overlap and similar functions.”
She added that there could be budget reductions in the other five regional tourism marketing organizations but that no decision has been made.
Money spent to promote B.C. as a tourist destination comes from a tax on hotel stays. Visitors across the province pay about $91 million annually through a 2% tax on accommodation. About $51 million of that flows to Destination BC, which has been providing approximately $1 million each to six regional tourism marketing organizations.
The rest of Destination BC’s budget pays for things such as administration, targeted campaigns to market B.C. in the U.S. and elsewhere and marketing specific experiences such as fishing, golf or skiing.
Because the $1 million saving will be redirected into new campaigns that involve multiple businesses or organizations and promote tourism in the region, Walden said the changes make more marketing dollars available to industry in southwest B.C.
Tourism Vancouver, for example, could partner with various businesses and receive new money for the campaign.
“It’s unclear how things will unfold,” said John Stibbard, VCMTR chairman and a principal at the Capilano Suspension Bridge.
“Smaller communities on the periphery might be left out of getting marketing dollars, so we’re working with Destination BC to figure out a plan to make sure that does not happen.”
Destination BC is set to reveal details of its changing funding strategy at the November 4 BC Tourism & Hospitality Summit at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
