A Message for our Co Founder,

Tourism is going to be one of the most affected industries in this global crisis. Many small and rural communities rely on tourism to survive. I am hearing too many cries for help from community accommodations, attractions, tours, guides, etc. from across Canada. For so many of them, the summer is their peak season in order to weather the slower winter season. History shows many will not see another good summer peak season until the summer of 2022. A 2.5 year recovery period!

Federal is helping big money tourism corporations like airlines, trains and more. Yes, they are providing services to help with lost wages in the service and hospitality industry. And yes, subsidies are being provided for small businesses.

BUT! Tourism is a provincial and regional responsibility. This brings to question? Where are our heavily funded provincial and regional tourism associations at this time? What are they doing? How are they helping? What actions are they implementing? What assurances are they giving to the front line of tourism? Is there an action plan? Where are they period? Most are ghosts when the tourism industry actually really needs them.

A webinar, an email, a text is all window dressing. Our clients receive them by the boat load anyway during the good times and now in these challenging times. Our clients do not need more links, tips and another Message from the President of the DMO.

All talk, no action is going to result in a very high rate of businesses not reopening, declaring bankruptcy and jobs lost.

When we break the curve (CO-VID), previous research shows tourism takes up to 2+ years to recover. I do not know many small town tourism businesses who will survive that. Anyone can be a hero in the good times. Now when our tourism and hospitality businesses need their provincial and regional support the most, they are ghosts, no-shows?

We are not a DMO. But... what makes us different from a DMO is that we are not corporate. We care about the people we work with. We know most of them well. We are actual people who love our job, the industry and our supporting clients. To us they are not a number.

In the next few days we will be announcing some measures to assist our current clients moving forward and for any new clients who want to work with actual human beings.

Unfortunately, we can do nothing on the scale of what a DMO can do and should do but we will do our best based on our limited resources and conversations we have had with our clients and partnered tourism stakeholders. It is the right thing to do. The bottom line... we want to survive these challenging times alongside our clients with our professionalism in tact. Leave no tourism business behind!