Dear editor:

A new term of council gives Niagara-on-the-Lake an opportunity to ask an important question about tourism.

Not whether we want tourism. We clearly do.

Tourism supports our hotels, wineries, restaurants, shops, the Shaw Festival and many of the amenities that residents themselves enjoy. It is part of the economic and cultural fabric of Niagara-on-the-Lake.

The better question: what kind of tourism do we want, and how do we make sure that it remains successful and sustainable for the next generation?

Many of the difficult issues our community has faced in recent years may appear at first to be separate problems: traffic and parking, short-term rentals replacing homes, neighbourhood concerns about noise, pressure on heritage properties, development that can change the character of residential areas and the growing demands placed on municipal infrastructure and services.

But perhaps they should not be considered separately.

Many of them lead back to the same underlying question: what kind of tourism are we encouraging, what benefits does it bring to the whole community and what costs accompany it?

For years, when traffic increases and parking becomes scarce, the discussion has tended to begin with: where can we put more cars?

Perhaps the question should come one step earlier: why are the cars coming, what economic and community benefit do they create and what kind of visitors should we be trying hardest to attract?

A visitor who stays several nights in a local hotel, attends the Shaw Festival, eats in our restaurants, visits our wineries and shops in our stores creates a very different impact from someone who drives into Old Town for a brief visit and then leaves.

Both are welcome. But they are not necessarily of equal value to the community, nor do they impose the same costs.

Niagara-on-the-Lake is also physically constrained. We cannot endlessly widen our historic streets, create new roads through Old Town or provide unlimited parking without changing the very place people are coming to experience.

There is a well-established concept in tourism research called the “tourism area life cycle.” Successful destinations grow, become busier and eventually reach a point where choices must be made.

With thoughtful management, they can renew themselves. Without it, congestion, crowding and loss of character can begin to undermine the destination itself.

Niagara-on-the-Lake has an opportunity to make those choices before circumstances make them for us.

I believe council should establish a broadly representative tourism and community sustainability committee early in its new term.

The tourism industry must have an important voice at that table. Hotel operators, wineries, restaurants, retailers, cultural organizations and tourism professionals understand their customers and their businesses in ways that residents cannot be expected to.

But the committee must also have strong representation from residents and community organizations whose responsibility is different: to consider the long-term interests of the entire town.

That balance is important.

An individual business quite properly asks how it can attract more customers and improve its own results. A community must ask an additional question: does the same decision improve the long-term economic, environmental, heritage and social wellbeing of Niagara-on-the-Lake as a whole?

Council also has a responsibility to ensure that the millions raised through the municipal accommodation tax strengthen Niagara-on-the-Lake — economically, culturally and as a place to live — rather than financing tourism that adds more pressure than value.

The committee’s first task should not be to promote more tourism or less tourism. It should define what successful tourism actually means.

How do we increase the economic and cultural benefits tourism provides while reducing unnecessary traffic, parking pressure and costs to residents?

How should we measure success — by the number of people who arrive, or by the value and quality of the experience we create for visitors, businesses and residents alike?

And before major tourism expenditures or infrastructure projects are approved, should we not be able to explain how they advance those agreed community objectives?

Tourism and residents do not have opposing interests. In the long run they depend on the same thing: protecting the qualities that make Niagara-on-the-Lake such an extraordinary place to live and such an extraordinary place to visit.

A new council gives us an opportunity to bring all of those interests together, ask the difficult questions and create a tourism strategy designed not merely for the next season, but for the next generation.

Protect what makes Niagara-on-the-Lake worth visiting.

Invite guests, not traffic.

Bruce Gitelman
NOTL