Canmore Business and Tourism’s upcoming plans for Christmas will see a month long festival aimed at making the mountain community synonymous with the holidays around the province.
CBT president Andrew Nickerson presented the vision for the event and others that are being planned over the next two years.
“When we get into talking about events and festivals, there is really two types we look at,” he said. “The first of which is the business driver and these are geared at making cash registers ring and the other is for community enrichment.
“Both of them are equally as important as each other and of course in the middle of that is the sweet spot.”
Christmas in Canmore runs from the last weekend in November to the end of December and Nickerson said the goal is for the town to be synonymous with the holidays and the place to do your shopping instead of at a mall in a big city.
He said events will happen everyday and prizes to be given away, but to be a success local businesses need to buy into it. It also coincides with already established events like Light Up Canmore, Skate With Santa and Canmore Rotary Club’s Festival of Trees.
Part of the reason for having special events in Canmore, Nickerson said, is economic development. He said economic development includes bringing visitors to town and converting them to second homeowners, residents and business owners.
“There has to be something about Canmore that engages people to want to make that first discovery,” he said. “So how do we use festivals to connect with people?”
He said the vast majority of visitors to town are Albertans and many perceive Canmore to about mountain sports.
“What we need to do is start looking and saying how do we change that,” Nickerson said, adding dining, unique shopping, the cultural scene and healthy living are areas to focus on to shift the needle away from sports. “We can build festivals around these different brand pillars and create remarkable experiences.”
He said CBT has no intention of developing festivals or events during the summer months of June, July and August as hotels and businesses are already busy with high visitation numbers at that time. But, he added, there are opportunities from September to December and January to May for more special events.
One of CBT’s goals has been to be recognized as a leading mountain festival destination. He said festivals should be at least 10 days long to fill in the holes between weekends, should have multiple events happening and businesses participating, have cash registers ringing, be industry led and be able to pay for itself.
He said event development should also avoid road closures and the requirement for lots of volunteers and it must engage locals.
“A really successful festival is going to get the locals engaged in it because anyone visiting a community like ours that really wants to feel that authenticity and lifestyle, they naturally want to go where the locals go,” Nickerson said. “If locals aren’t going to be downtown engaging in activities then visitors aren’t going to and you end up with a recipe for failure.”
The next event after Christmas is the Winter Carnival during the first two weeks of February when Snowtracks will return to Main Street. Uncorked is set to return in April and in 2016 Canmore will host two back-to-back World Cups providing an opportunity for a huge Nordic festival.
“These are huge and almost unprecedented for one venue to host back-to-back events,” he said. “We want to own Nordic sports for that month in 2016.”
Further event development ideas Nickerson mentioned were a cultural festival in the last two weeks of October and a possible wellness festival in the spring.
“It is about mindset and in a lot of cases there will be a change of mindset required,” he said, adding that means looking at events and festivals as opportunities instead of inconveniences. “What we really want to do and look holistically at is how does the year look. How do we look as a festival destination and what is the intent of some of these festivals? Some of them really are about the fabric of the community and the fact that we all really take pride and want to feel good about ourselves and this is what we do.
“Some of them are about marketing – it is about that connection point that says people come to town and don’t necessarily spend money, but they engage in something. What happens is they fall in love with Canmore because of it and then next week, or the week after, or the month after that is when they come back and they have the chequebook out and they are spending money in the community. And some are fabulous weekends for businesses where everyone’s cash registers ringing.”
