When it comes to tourism, Nanaimo Mayor Bill McKay says “we are going nowhere but up.”
Nanaimo is four months into a transition process for tourism with different services now in the hands of several organizations and an effort underway to recruit committee members, who will advise staff and council on tourism. So far, the city has received four applications for between nine and 11 seats, and has opted to extend its deadline by a week until Friday (March 24).
Tourism and economic development in the Harbour City have been in flux since Nanaimo city council decided last year to pull tourism from the Nanaimo Economic Development Corporation and ultimately disband the organization.
The City of Nanaimo, Tourism Vancouver Island and Nanaimo Hospitality Association have taken on services previously handled by Tourism Nanaimo and there’s work with Nanaimo Port Authority, to come up with a business plan to address visitor experiences of cruise ship passengers with the Downtown Nanaimo Business Improvement Association, who ran a cruise ship welcome program, now poised to dissolve.
“The city took steps all through January, February, March to make sure operationally the provision of tourism services is being taken care of,” said Philip Cooper, city communications manager, who said there are regular meetings and lots of different conversations taking place to ensure nothing major gets dropped.
Tourism Vancouver Island, under contract for destination marketing and development, has come up with a marketing plan after consulting with the industry and plans to present it this week to the city for approval. Once approved, Dave Petryk, president and CEO of Tourism Vancouver Island, said his group will move forward on tactics including digital and social marketing and broadcasts to get ready for the summer.
The tourism organization has permission from the city to use the Tourism Nanaimo brand, it’s been handling social media and is expanding and updating the website content. From a consumers’ perspective, Petryk said it’s business as usual.
“I think a lot of good things have been done for quite some time, we just want to continue doing them and where we can, do them better,” he said.
The city has pulled the visitor centre in house until the end of this year and will now administer a $20,000 sport grant previously handled by Tourism Nanaimo while sport tourism is with Nanaimo Hospitality Association, which represents hotels and motels. The NHA hired a former Tourism Nanaimo employee on contract to handle festival, event and sport tourism grants stemming from a hotel tax.
“Nothing has really changed other than the fact that Tourism Nanaimo is not there. All those grants programs and all that support for bids and everything is still in place,” said Dan Brady, hospitality association president who said the hotel tax pays for the employee.
As for tourism, Brady said gaps from the quick departure of Tourism Nanaimo have been addressed and there’s collaboration.
“[Tourism Vancouver Island] has got the ball going now, they’ve got staff in place; we work with them a lot. I think we’re in good shape going into the summer,” he said.
McKay said there’s the expectation all the groups handling tourism will come together eventually in a common group. He’s looking forward to a “great year” in Nanaimo.
“I know we’re on lots of people’s radars and we’ve got an additional [cruise] ship this year. I think we are going nowhere but up,” he said.
The city is now handling economic development in-house, with a new website and one employee – Amrit Manhas, the former interim chief executive officer of the NEDC. Manhas is heavily involved in the process of winding down the corporation, looking at next steps to set up an in-house model and doing the work she did at the NEDC, according to Cooper.
“What we don’t have yet is the new structure of the governance and the terms of reference in terms of what they would focus on, and those are things that we’ll be looking to explore starting off with a report to council in April,” Cooper said.
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