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Uncorked to return in 2015

Canmore’s first food and wine festival will return next year after organizers and participants reported the event was a huge success.

Canmore’s first food and wine festival will return next year after organizers and participants reported the event was a huge success.

Canmore Business and Tourism president and CEO Andrew Nickerson presented a few of the numbers to come out of the Canmore Uncorked festival at the most recent Bow Valley Builders and Developers Association luncheon.

Nickerson said over 1,000 tickets were sold for events such as progressive dinners and a craft beer festival, Tourism Canmore Kananaskis’s website saw an increase in traffic of 400 per cent over 2013 and many retailers and galleries in the community reported a boost to their numbers as well.

“Our initial numbers back from restaurants was that many restaurants reported triple digit increases,” he added. “People were in town and spending money.”

One of the goals of the festival was to see support from locals, with 60 per cent participation as the target. Uncorked saw 55 per cent of those attending being locals and 35 per cent came from Calgary and the rest of Alberta to enjoy fixed price menus and other events.

Nickerson said Uncorked fits into Tourism Alberta’s Tourism Framework, released last year, and its vision of “innovative leadership, a flourishing unified industry and traveller-focused authentic experiences creating prosperity in Alberta.”

Alberta Minister of Tourism Parks and Recreation Richard Starke agreed, saying culinary tourism has huge potential for growth in the province.

“It is our plan to take tourism in Alberta from $7.8 billion to $10.3 billion annually by 2020, which certainly is an ambitious goal and one that I think is entirely attainable, especially when I see the kind of initiatives that Andrew (Nickerson) just described that are going on here in Canmore,” Starke said during the BOWDA event. “If everybody gets on board the way Canmore gets on board, we will hit that target, I have no doubt about it.

“The framework is really about a renewed partnership and it is a partnership between the public and private sectors and driving economic development across our province because tourism happens everywhere in our province.”

He said the framework is a unified vision and strategic plan to create, enhance and promote authentic tourism experiences. While announcing the new Alberta Strategic Tourism Council, Starke said it doesn’t make sense for tourism stakeholders in the province to compete against each other.

“But I tell you what does make sense is for us to work together or collaboratively and to bundle together our tourism marketing dollars to ultimately share the greater success.

“You folks get that with Canmore and Kananaskis Country working together. Banff and Lake Louise working together gets that and Travel Alberta gets that because it presents a unified brand of Alberta worldwide that has won in five years 47 awards for brand recognition.”

Nickerson said the entire Bow Valley has to be a huge part of growing tourism in the province.

“The new Alberta Tourism Framework is a road map that will take us there,” he said, adding Canmore Uncorked is an example of how a unified industry, innovative leadership and creating experiences for visitors can drive economic growth. “It is tourism driving economic development.”

In developing Canmore Uncorked, Nickerson said CBT looked to other culinary festivals for ideas and inspiration. The impetus to create an event came from the local restaurant industry that wanted a festival to showcase Canmore as a year-round culinary destination.

“There are very few places that could have done this with the product already in place,” he added. “We didn’t have to invent something new, what we had to do was adapt and make it work here in Canmore.”


Rocky Mountain Outlook

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