In the hope that one day the community of Canmore will come together in some form or another to create a destination marketing organization, the board of directors for Canmore Business and Tourism are leaving behind its corporate structure.
Canmore Business and Tourism announced in July that due to a major funding shortfall it would cease operations as the community’s destination marketing organization and economic development agency.
The impression left was that the organization would basically cease to exist entirely once it had wrapped up operations, but that’s not actually the case, according to CBT board members Sean Meggs and Don Blackett.
Meggs said the board wants the organization to “go dormant” and continue to exist as a corporate asset.
“So if community business leaders in the future can get the funding they need, they can pick Canmore Business and Tourism up again,” he said.
Blackett said the board has been working out what its financial position will be when all operations cease, which includes the Visitor Information Centre on the Trans-Canada Highway and Mountain Market contract with the municipality. He said CBT has been able to pay all its creditors and has been helped ensure that was done by the last remaining hotels that belonged to the destination marketing fund (DMF).
“They have been making sure we have just enough,” Blackett said. “We are going to manage this thing down to a zero bank balance and we are not stiffing any creditors.”
Meggs said a blank slate is what CBT’s board hopes to offer a future group interested in taking up the reigns of destination marketing for Canmore and Kananaskis. Canmore saw $345 million in spending by visitors in 2015, a significant amount, according to a recent economic impact assessment of tourism conducted by the municipality.
Meggs said they hope to be able to pass along a clean organization, including the database of information collected from businesses, a website and the work that has been done to date by its staff.
“It can be resurrected,” he said.
The DMF was a voluntarily organized group of local hotels that contributed a three per cent surcharge on room nights to destination marketing. In Alberta, hotels are permitted to charge a three per cent fee and use it for that purpose. However, there are no regulations concerning how they do so.
Canmore’s DMF struggled with the fact that some hotels did not sign up for the endeavour to begin with, but charged the three per cent, and hotels that saw that as unfair, or a competitive advantage, and decided to quit the DMF altogether.
With an eight-year contribution of $7 million, the DMF was the primary funding source for CBT. Other funding sources included membership fees and an economic development contract with the municipality.
The DMF’s inability to convince all hotels to be a part of the fund and decision to quit as an organization was the catalyst that resulted in CBT also folding.
Canmore Business and Tourism’s board will hold its annual general meeting soon as well, and a small board will be named to sit and hold the asset in trust, said Blackett.
