Jumping on the tourism train
By Adelle Ellis, Times Reporter
Photo Courtesy of Alexandra Ross
The Your Business in Tourism forum, held at Origin Malting and Brewing, was initiated by the Town of Strathmore’s tourism taskforce and was supported by Strathmore and District Chamber of Commerce and facilitated by Community Futures Wild Rose.
The event was held to take stock of some of the tourism assets in the area and to share ideas about expanding the current assets and to create new tourism assets in the region.
“Tourism is an important tool for economic development in terms of business retention, business and investment attraction,” said Alexandra Ross, economic development officer with the Town of Strathmore. “It puts Strathmore on the map and increases awareness of what we have to offer. Over the course of the next 12 months we will develop a lot of tools for our business community.”
Held in coordination with Tourism Week, Ross noted the event added to one of the key messages of Tourism Alberta – that tourism works and if tourism works, then businesses work.
The Town’s tourism taskforce was created with the overall goal to establish a destination marketing organization for Strathmore and the region, and Ross noted the forum was just the first step in their plan.
Terri Kinsman, chair of the taskforce, started off the evening with introductions and the focus group objective. Ross then provided a background on tourism in relation to economic development, before Anastasio Martin-Stillwell with Travel Alberta provided an overview of tourism and the importance of being an ambassador along with a review on the Alberta Tourism Information Service. Wendy Gerbrandt with Community Futures Wild Rose provided an overview of the asset gathering collection that was performed in 2017 before facilitating group work-together sessions on tourism in the community to describe attendees’ views on their attributes, strengths, weaknesses, challenges and potential opportunities the community and region should consider.
“I think one of the major takeaways was the key to success is collaboration and tourism works,” said Ross, who added the region can grow in the events sector.
Some benefits of hosting forums such as this include educational components: “increasing awareness, know your backyard, capitalizing on opportunities and marketing collaborations, customer service in terms of being able to provide information to our visitors and travellers that stop in on their way through, building capacity and much more,” said Ross.
Although there are no details released yet, similar forums will likely be held in future.
Ross encourages anyone who has ideas for a business or event that will attract visitors to contact her at alexandra.ross@strathmore.ca.