Like an orchestra doing a final warm-up before the curtain rises, the promoters of the Tourism Jasper collective marketing approach are making sure their pitch is well-tuned before bringing it to the public.

On Tuesday morning, Stephen Hanus, a local consultant that has taken on the job of selling the model to the business community, and long-time proponent Scott Eady presented a new and improved sales pitch to the board of Jasper Tourism and Commerce and the local press. The purpose: to get all the major players on song ahead of a series of sector-based focus groups, where Hanus and Eady will discuss the collective marketing model with business licence holders.

“We’re not trying to jam anything down anyone’s throat, but we are trying to educate people about the need for this,” Eady said. “The idea is to take input from these sessions, tweak the model some more and go towards a larger, town hall approach.”

Getting the Tourism Jasper dream to this point has taken some doing. Eady and others made a presentation to municipal council in October 2005, and were asked at that point to return with a more concrete proposal supported by the business community. Through the forthcoming sessions, Hanus and Eady hope to be able to quantify that support by means of a random survey, and by soliciting signed letters of support from business owners.

“The goal is to get a certain percentage of each business sector to fill out a survey,” Hanus said. “That will help to tease out the level of support.”

When asked to define exactly how much support would be enough for the proponents to feel comfortable about moving forward, Eady and Hanus weren’t reading from the same sheet music.

“We’re not fixed to a number,” Eady began, while Hanus interjected that “it should be 100 per cent.”

“Having said that, we’re not looking for 100 per cent,” Eady insisted. 

No matter the percentages, once the group requests that council enable a tourism authority to manage marketing dollars, the public will be able to have their say through the bylaw creation process.

“This is just getting it into the starting blocks,” said Eady. “Once you’re in the bylaw phase, things can still change. We just want to make sure that if you’re in a Formula 1 race, that we’re coming with a Formula 1 car, and not a Mazda,” he continued, introducing a motorsport analogy that destroyed the musical theme that had been painstakingly created by this hack.

The timeline that the Tourism Jasper group continues to work towards is the spring of 2007, when the administration of business licences is set to be transferred from Parks Canada to the Municipality of Jasper. Barry Romanko, Parks’ townsite and realty services manager, was in attendance and confirmed that Parks was still looking at that timing for the turnover.

Fundamentally, the marketing model has changed very little since it was first proposed to council last year. Centred around the principles of collectivity, equality and flexibility, the proposed tourism authority would be funded by fees levied as part of the business licencing process. These fees are broken down by sector (accommodations, retail and services, restaurant/bars and attractions/transportation) according to the percentage of revenue generated by each sector.

The figures used in the Tourism Jasper model are derived from a study conducted in 1998 by Alberta Economic Development, and are complemented by more up-to-date visitation information obtained from Parks Canada. Currently, Jasper hosts approximately 1.8 million visitors every year. These people spend an average of $248 per party per night, and the median stay lasts 2.3 days. This means that nearly $230 million is spent every year.

For the moment, Jasper spends only 28 cents per visitor on marketing, a figure that puts the town well behind other tourism destinations in Canada. The proposed collective marketing model would increase that per visitor spending to about 47 cents.

A detailed breakdown of just how much businesses should expect to pay under the new model in comparison with their voluntary Tourism and Commerce dues was included in the presentation. In some sectors and sub-sectors, the increase will be minimal or non-existent. However, Hanus acknowledged that not all businesses are chamber members right now.

“Currently there are businesses that contribute zero to collective marketing,” he said. “This model would incorporate that revenue.”

Indeed, paying fees to Tourism Jasper would be a condition of obtaining a business licence, if all goes according to the plan outlined by the proponents. However, this would only be true of businesses located within the town boundaries, as there are currently no plans to transfer business licencing for outlying accommodations and attractions from Parks Canada to the municipality. Romanko confirmed that Parks would not levy a fee for Tourism Jasper for licences administered by the federal agency.

This means that major players like Marmot Basin, Jasper Park Lodge and the Tramway would be voluntary members of the marketing authority. Eady is not concerned.

“These businesses have been indicating strong support and they will be signing letters soon,” he said.

Business owners will soon have a chance to see the nuts and bolts of the plan, as the first focus group is scheduled for next week, and the group hopes to complete this stage of the process before the end of July.