Canmore’s official destination marketing organization and contracted economic development agency – Canmore Business and Tourism – has called it quits.
The board announced Friday (July 15) it was no longer prepared to continue operating due to a lack of sustainable funding.
“Canmore Business and Tourism (CBT), also known as Tourism Canmore Kananaskis, is winding up operations effective immediately due to its inability to secure a sustainable source of funding,” said the statement.
At the core of the funding crisis, said a statement issued by CBT’s board, is the fact that its main source of funding to operate has been a contribution by local hotels through a voluntary charge collected on hotel room night stays – the Canmore Destination Marketing Fund (DMF).
The DMF decided to dissolve its operations recently due to declining numbers of its membership. Since the beginning of the year, the DMF has only seen 20 per cent of hotel rooms participating in the fund.
CBT’s CEO Andrew Nickerson and four other full-time employees have lost their jobs with the organization as a result. The organization is responsible for multiple contracts and will be wrapping them up in the near future. What that means for CBT’s contracts to run the Visitor Information Centre for Travel Alberta and the VIC downtown is uncertain. The weekly Mountain Market will continue through the rest of this summer and Canmore Uncorked will be put out to tender as an event according to CBT board member Sean Meggs.
He said the CBT board and membership would like to see the successful and award-winning annual culinary event continue and the tender process find a successful new home for it.
Over the past eight years the DMF has contributed $7.1 million towards CBT, said its board chair Donna Trautman, and would continue to support a coordinated approach to destination marketing, however, hotels in Canmore continue to remove their inventory from the shared objective.
Whether change in ownership, or changed priorities, without the fee charged for hotel room nights in these hotels being contributed to the fund, the DMF has opted to cease collecting what represented the main source of funding for CBT.
“We have not been effective in convincing all hotels to participate,” she said.
Trautman called the voluntary hotel room tax a flawed mechanism for sustainable funding because the amount of contributions was uncertain and based entirely on occupancy rates.
“It is not stable in that it is voluntary,” she said.
The DMF once represented revenues from more than 60 per cent of hotel rooms – of which there are 3,000 in Canmore and Kananskis. Nickerson called the funding formula a house of cards that has collapsed quickly.
Nickerson said he is concerned there is no longer an organization strategically marketing Canmore as a destination to the world.
“Destination marketing is momentum building,” he said. “Destination marketing is the result of years of targeted and careful brand building and we will continue to see the benefit of (CBT’s work), but there will be a point where we lose that momentum.
“Simply relying on the mountains to attract visitors is not an effective strategy. Destination marketing is a scientific discipline that targets potential visitors that are most likely to be influenced to come to Canmore and spend money in our businesses.”
Visitation to Canmore, said Nickerson, represents $350 million annually in spending. With declining revenue, however, he said it has become impossible for CBT to be effective any longer.
“This is not through lack of trying to find a mechanism for funding,” he said. “We have tried so many different models, unfortunately we have reached this cross roads.”
