BANFF - The Town of Banff is spending about $10,300 to do its own survey of visitors about their experience in the tourist town.
BANFF - The Town of Banff is spending about $10,300 to do its own survey of visitors about their experience in the tourist town.
Previous visitor experience surveys, called Indexperience, have been discontinued and the Town's partners in that project, Parks Canada and Banff Lake Louise Tourism, have started their own new survey programs.
The municipality will conduct its survey every two years during summer months, funded by the operating reserve beginning in 2019.
Officials say the new study will provide consistent data on transportation, parking, navigation, washrooms, atmosphere and welcome, cleanliness, safety, aesthetics and heritage values.
"Data is king and this council and previous councils have made decisions based on data collected and based on real information," said Mayor Karen Sorensen.
"This is one way for a relatively low price for us to get real data from our visitors, telling us what they think we're doing well and what their concerns are."
The current operating reserve for visitor surveys sits at $15,000. Administration proposes using this reserve for the first survey. Future surveys will be funded within the visitor experience budget.
Indexperience summer and winter surveys, conducted in 2007-08 and 2016, intercepted visitors in busy areas, such as downtown and the gondola on Sulphur Mountain, who were then asked participate online once they returned home.
The new survey will target 400 completed surveys, providing a margin of error of + 4.9 percentage points, or a 95 per cent confidence level.
Diana Waltmann, the Town's director of communications and marketing, said the Town will seek an expert's help in forming the questions, but the survey would focus on municipally-owned infrastructure and services.
"Parks, for example, is asking questions around transportation to the park and in the park, and we're asking about how people are getting around in the townsite," she said.
"There's definitely a distinction between the services."
Councillor Ted Christensen was the only councillor to vote against the survey, noting he'd prefer to work with Parks Canada and Banff Lake Louise Tourism. Coun. Peter Poole was absent from the meeting.
