Travel Alberta—the provincial government’s tourism marketing organization—set up shop in Jasper, April 3, for a four-hour workshop aimed at showing off its newest initiative, and bringing together Jasper’s tourism operators for feedback.
The Jasper show was held at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, and was the organization’s first stop in a series of road shows it’s offering across the province, as it rolls out its new provincial tourism framework.
Through the new framework, Travel Alberta hopes to grow the province’s tourism industry to be worth $10.3 billion by the year 2020.
Bruce Okabe, the organization’s CEO, explained that for every dollar the government invests in the industry it gets 19 back. He said tourism in Alberta is incredibly important, and making it a bigger industry is vital to Alberta’s long-term economic health.
Part of the way the organization hopes to do that is by targeting more international and non-Albertan travellers. Okabe explained that right now a significant portion of people travelling in Alberta are Albertans, which is fine, but ultimately not sustainable.
“Alberta spends a lot of time marketing itself to itself, and at the end of the day that’s putting a lot of eggs into one basket. At some point everybody knows the energy business is going to go back into a trough, and we’re going to be looking around again,” wondering where all the tourism income went, he said.
Part of growing the province’s tourism industry is not just bringing travellers to the province, but ensuring their experience is a positive one once they arrive. That is accomplished at a local level, and Travel Alberta tapped into the approximately 30 people attending the session to get a sense of what the local situation looks like.
The brainstorming session was a lively one, where people from across the local tourism industry painted a picture of some of the struggles Jasper faces as a tourism destination.
Most of the concerns raised were related to park access, and many talked specifically about the difficult conditions on the Icefields Parkway. Dave Baker, talking about his experience driving a bus for SunDog Transportation and Tours Ltd., said the road often is not cleared well, making it a significant deterrent for travellers who are usually on a tight schedule.
Some winters, he said, “you can see a conga line of [rental] RVs trying to get back down through the roads and people are missing $3,000 flights back home.”
Along with the poor road conditions, participants brought up concerns about the unreliable trains and a lack of good information about how many international versus local travellers come to Jasper. The province’s signage problem was also raised.
“That is probably the number one complaint of tourists,” said Verna Brown, who operates the KOA campground in Hinton. “Tourists are coming from around the world and they have no idea where they are going,” she said.
Okabe agreed that access is the main obstacle Jasper’s tourism industry faces, especially in terms of the Icefields Parkway.
“The Icefields Parkway, in my personal opinion, is a fundamental thing that needs to be made easier for people to get around. It’s one thing for Travel Alberta to bring people here, but if they can’t get people from point A to point B, that’s a huge problem,” he said.
And while that is an issue outside of tourism operators’ control, Okabe said he thinks Jasper’s accessibility troubles could be somewhat alleviated if a proposal to allow the Edson airport to accept larger flights is approved by the government.
“Air access is absolutely critical for tourism growth in our province, because we are not a natural gateway,” Okabe said, explaining that most international flights land in places like Vancouver and Toronto, putting Alberta at a disadvantage in terms of ease of access for tourists.
And larger flights arriving in Edson means access will be a little easier for people who hope to visit Jasper.
“If you have the product there, it makes a lot of sense to make it easier for the traveller to experience that product by making it easier for them to get there,” Okabe said.
“The beauty of Jasper is that it’s in the middle of a national park; the challenge is that it’s in a national park,” he added, saying that at the end of the day, it’s important for the town to market its strengths to the people who will be interested in them.
The park is “one of the crown jewels of travelling in Alberta,” said Okabe, adding that if it can market itself properly, it should have a bright future.
Trevor Nichols
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