Tourism Golden’s revenues have been increasing year over year, and saw another seven per cent increase in 2018, despite B.C.’s state of emergency wildfires.
As a province, British Columbia is outpacing other destinations, and Golden is high on the list of desired places to visit, says Tourism Golden executive director Joanne Sweeting.
For eight consecutive years, Tourism Golden revenues have increased, and last year saw an excess of $32 million from January to December. The non-profit group focuses a lot of their efforts on promoting Golden during the shoulder seasons, and officially opened the new visitor’s centre last year, guiding tourists into town and informing them of all of the activities Golden has to offer.
Huge changes in technology have also provided opportunities, Sweeting said.
“For the first time in 2017, the mobile users exceeded the desktop users,” she added. “We’re always working on content creation, videos, photos.”
Tourism Golden revamped their website, using mobile-friendly images and videos. In the first six weeks of the launch, Tourism Golden saw a 20 per cent increase in time spent on the website. Tousim Golden has also put digital kiosks in a few new places, like the Best Western, to better serve visitors who are staying in town already. This way, they don’t have to depend on their mobile data, and can find out information in an interactive way right from the comfort of their own accommodations.
In the summer, Tourism Golden has found that a lot of the accommodators in town are at maximum capacity in July and August. As a result, Tourism Golden has also been focusing their efforts on shoulder seasons, to maximize visitor’s stays. It takes a lot of planning and advertising, and working in collaboration with Destination BC, Sled Kootenay, Kootenay Dirt (mountain biking), Explore Magazine, and a myriad of other destination groups and companies.
In the shoulder season and winter, occupancy increased in all months except April, and the annual average occupancy rates increased by 14.6 per cent. The average length of stay increased to 2.8 nights in the summer, and three nights in the winter.
Every two years, Tourism Golden updates their visitor studies. In the summer, Tourism Golden can be seen at community events like farmer’s markets, up at Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, and around town asking people to complete a survey on their iPads. Then, Tourism Golden collects that information to provide the best visitor experience based on people’s wants and needs when visiting Golden.
The information for the visitor study also includes economic studies like labour shortages, consultations with stakeholders about revenues and stays, and takes a global scrape of social media relevant to Golden to compile an extensive resource of information.
“One of our key pillars is working with stakeholders,” Sweeting said, adding that she and the staff at Tourism Golden regularly attend industry events to learn more about how to stay ahead in an industry that is always changing and expanding.
Throughout the year, Tourism Golden plays an important role in organizing and bolstering events hosted in Golden, which in turn, increases the number of visitors who attend those events. In 2018, occupancy rates for January and February rose by 12.1 per cent, which was stimulated by the Freeride World Tour that was hosted at Kicking Horse Mountain Resort.
Other events hosted by Tourism Golden include, but are not limited to, the Golden 24 cross country mountain bike race in June, the Willi Muller hang gliding and paragliding championships at the end of July, and the Golden Ultra, a trail running race in September.
Tourism Golden continues to work on initiatives that help promote Golden and Area A, bringing visitors to the community from all over Canada, North America, and the world. It takes a team of people working together to strategically plan, implement, and execute many goals all at once to make it happen, and the team at Tourism Golden has been working year over year to keep building on the steadily increasing number of tourists who visit.
Find out more about Tourism Golden and what Golden has to offer at www.tourismgolden.com, or visit the Visitor’s Information Centre on the Trans-Canada Highway in the summer.
