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Okabe leaving Travel Alberta

After five years at the helm of the provincial destination marketing organization, CEO Bruce Okabe is stepping down.

After five years at the helm of the provincial destination marketing organization, CEO Bruce Okabe is stepping down.

At his final annual general meeting with Travel Alberta earlier this month in Banff, Okabe had some final words of wisdom for the industry.

Of particular concern for Okabe is the continued reduction of funding to the Canadian Tourism Commission by the federal government. He said when he started as CEO the CTC had a budget of $100 million and after five years it is $61 million.

“Quite frankly, it is like trying to get your mother to love you,” he said. “In my personal opinion there hasn’t been a strong enough lobby by the Tourist Industry Association of Canada to bring attention to this.”

Where the CTC focuses its efforts is generally followed by provincial marketing organizations, or, as Okabe put it “as Canada goes, Alberta goes.” The challenge, he added, is the tourism industry is an “industry of industries.”

“Our problem is we can’t organize ourselves out of a paper bag and unless we start doing that we are never going to be able to get the right infrastructure in place where Canada is well funded and that makes it easier on the provinces to do what we need to do in the tourism market,” Okabe said.

He said if the feds can’t manage to increase the budget for the CTC, Alberta and B.C. should consider walking away from it to form a new partnership and brand called Western Canada.

He noted that Alberta and B.C. work together, but are also competitors. With Destination B.C. expected to unveil its new look and brand at the beginning of November, Okabe warned operators to be ready.

“We are going to be joined very quickly by the 800-pound gorilla and they are going to do a really good job,” he said. “We are kind of a welterweight in a heavyweight fight. We’ve been the only boxer in the ring for a little while, so it has been a little easier.

“That fight is going to be taken to us like nobody’s business and we are going to have to fight tooth and nail to retain customers and retain that growth that we have had.”

At a question and answer session after the AGM, there was praise from tour operators for the work Okabe has done getting the organization to where it is today.

Inside Out Experience owner Andrew Pratt said the work has been amazing as far as the bigger picture goes – in other words bringing more people into Alberta.

According to the 2013 performance report for the Crown corporation, visitation into Alberta airports was up 4.8 per cent, highway traffic up 1.8 per cent, national park attendance up 4.7 per cent and food and beverage revenues were up 6.4 per cent.

But Pratt said he is concerned about the product being offered and whether Travel Alberta has a handle on that.

“You are bringing a lot of people into Alberta now and in fact to be quite honest we were overwhelmed this year by the numbers of people we really weren’t ready for it as far as staffing and stuff like that,” he said. The thing Travel Alberta needs to work on is the micro side of tourism.”

Okabe agreed, saying where Travel Alberta is paying attention is to experiences like the Kananaskis based rafting company and seeing where how that can be developed.

“I couldn’t agree with you more and that is why in our five-year plan we are taking a look at the actual split of that money on the 70 per cent of the levy and we are putting more and more emphasis into experience and development,” he said.


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