1 C
Niagara Falls
Friday, March 29, 2024
Op-ed: Well-planned, sustainable tourism is goal of working group
Letter writer Bruce Gitelman wants NOTL to use the municipal accommodation tax to help the town focus less on high-volume tourism. FILE

David Levesque
Special to The Lake Report

The NOTL Tourism Advisory Working Group is becoming an official entity under the auspices of Tourism Niagara-on-the-Lake, with a clear goal and vision to work in collaboration with town council and staff to find and implement solutions that will lead to a better managed and more sustainable tourism experience for everyone in town.
 
Our determined and committed group came to existence in early January 2020. The working group not only efficiently assembles around the same table a variety of tourism and business stakeholders, but also some of the most experienced and qualified individuals from the NOTL tourism industry, all ready to work together for the benefit of residents and business owners alike.
 
The group’s current primary focus is to help manage this year's pandemic tourism response, but discussions are already taking place on the creation of a sustainable tourism strategic plan to help establish a clear, workable path for the future of our town and its tourism industry. Our group recognizes that such a general plan needs to be clear, actionable and inclusive of the amazing diversity of people visiting, living and working in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
 
The COVID-19 pandemic regrettably delayed our efforts toward a tourism strategic plan, as everyone has had to focus on survival. The group is now reuniting and open to start working on specific long-term tourism aspects, like parking management and traffic flow.
 
A short-term plan is developing to help with pandemic recovery efforts as tourism slowly increases toward a target of 30 per cent of last year’s numbers. This experience has helped us all to recognize tourism is more than ever vital to the short- and long-term survival of our town.

We now need a carefully crafted, sustainable tourism strategy built by industry stakeholders and key representatives themselves. We must get organized, put any differences and private agendas aside and collaborate to move forward for the betterment of our community. 
 
So many people have been working hard since the beginning of the pandemic. Our town leaders and staff have been managing the emergency response to protect our community; businesses have responded by voluntarily closing or implementing the needed protective measures and our citizens have been careful and respectful of protecting our vulnerable population. 
 
Since March, the NOTL Chamber of Commerce has put an outstanding amount of effort, despite limited resources, toward both tourism industry advisory and advocacy. Chamber president Eduardo Lafforgue is committed to keeping all business owners, regardless of membership, updated with the information and tools they need to go forward during these uncertain times.
 
The Chamber of Commerce board of directors has been meeting weekly since the province declared a state of emergency and continues to do so. As of mid-July, the NOTL Tourism Advisory Working Group also restarted weekly meetings. The challenges we face can and will be solved only when the tourism industry, the town and residents all start working together toward a unified and well-planned sustainable vision for NOTL. 
 
We believe that although the interests of various groups need to be heard, best practices suggest that these interests converge into a single entity being able to efficiently work through the needed compromises to meet a successful outcome. The working group's intent is to facilitate the opportunities for collaboration by opening these lines of communication so we can all start working together toward this unified vision as soon as possible.

* Among others, the NOTL Tourism Advisory Working Group includes Tim Jennings, executive director, Shaw Festival; Paul Macintyre, vice-president of operations, Vintage Hotels and David Levesque, president, Niagara-on-the-Lake Bed and Breakfast Association.
 

Subscribe to our mailing list