tourism vancouver master plan

Tourism Vancouver AGM 2013 | BCBusiness Tourism Vancouver chair R. Gordon Johnson (left) and Mayor Gregor Robertson at the Tourism Vancouver 2013 AGM.

Vancouver’s Tourism Master Plan Revealed

First ever Tourism Vancouver Master Plan calls for improved product development, events, visitor experience design, neighbourhoods, tourism infrastructure development and transportation, and more

More than 300 members of the Vancouver’s $2.7 billion tourism industry gathered at the Vancouver Playhouse yesterday to hear an overview of city’s first ever Tourism Master Plan at Tourism Vancouver ‘s 110th annual general meeting.

The concept of the plan, led by Resonance Consultancy and a combined effort by Tourism Vancouver, the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Economic Commission, began over a year ago. The action for it stemmed from Rethink Vancouver, a Tourism Vancouver-led industry collaboration that started in 2010 aimed at identifying steps to help Vancouver achieve its goal of becoming a “World City.”

“Rethink Vancouver and the Tourism Master Plan are monumental steps for Vancouver,” said Tourism Vancouver president and CEO Rick Antonson. “We are particularly heartened by how closely the interests of local residents align with the tourism industry.”

The plan has involved more than 180 interviews with tourism industry professionals, an online survey of more than 2,000 residents and industry people, two open house forums and a review of more than 400 documents and reports.

Recommendations in the plan hit eight key areas of focus: product development, events, visitor experience design, neighbourhoods, tourism infrastructure development, transportation, advocacy and public affairs and partnerships and alliances. (A full list of recommendations can be found on the Tourism Master Plan website .)

“Building on the incredible success of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, [tourism] is an industry with vast potential for growth and one that merits the full ongoing support of government partners,” Mayor Robertson said at the meeting.

Recommendations from the plan further include establishing a product development strategy to support existing attractions and create new tourism concepts; creating a dedicated events organization to lead, organize and manage citywide efforts in delivering year-round events; and creating a neighbourhood marketing council with Business Improvements Areas to promote the diversity of neighbourhoods in Vancouver.

The overall goal of the plan is to guide the development of Vancouver’s tourism sector in a more coordinated fashion, ensuring that the industry grows in an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable manner. The final plan will be released to the public in July.

The AGM also introduced Tourism Vancouver’s 2013/2014 Board of Directors. Incoming chair Bob Lindsay, owner/operator of Lift Bar, Grill, View will lead a 15-member board made up of prominent members of the tourism industry.

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Eleven new destination and tourism infrastructure developments are underway in the Vancouver, Coast & Mountains tourism region with support from the Province.

“We know recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic for businesses and people in the tourism sector are critically important. This fund creates new tourism infrastructure, which will help the sector recover, create local jobs and spur economic development,” said Melanie Mark, Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport. “Building on the calls to action from the sector, this fund invests in initiatives that link communities together and encourages visitors to spend time at several destinations within a region.”

Destination BC, representing the Vancouver, Coast & Mountains tourism region, in partnership with community destination management organizations, local and regional governments, First Nations, non-profits and other partners have worked together to identify initiatives that will enhance the region’s tourism amenities and experiences.

Initiatives underway in the Vancouver, Coast & Mountains tourism region include developing public outdoor instalments in the Metro Vancouver area to animate gathering spaces, investing in the Experience the Fraser project, and developing a self-guided journey to Pemberton’s, Lillooet’s and the Bridge River Valley’s key agri-tourism attractions.

Examples in other parts of the province include improvement of trail systems throughout a region for hiking, Nordic skiing or mountain biking, self-guided tour signage to highlight agri-tourism areas and a series of Indigenous landmarks throughout a region. The Province has provided $2.1 million toward these projects.

“Intentional destination development planning in the Vancouver, Coast and Mountains region brings together diverse tourism partners to strengthen the hearts of our communities and create compelling experiences for visitors,” said Jody Young, manager, Vancouver, Coast & Mountains region for Destination BC. “When we work together to invest in experiential infrastructure projects that benefit numerous communities in the region, the result is not only economic return, but a stronger connection between people and the places they share.”

As part of StrongerBC: BC’s Economic Recovery Plan, the province’s six tourism regions have received a total of $13.6 million to create employment opportunities, attract new businesses and increase economic diversification within communities.

The Targeted Regional Tourism Initiative is one of three infrastructure investment programs for tourism as part of StrongerBC, including the Community Economic Recovery Infrastructure program, Destination Development and the Tourism Dependent Communities Initiative. The approved projects must be completed by March 2023.

Brenda Bailey, MLA for Vancouver-False Creek –

“Tourism is such an important industry for people and businesses across Greater Vancouver. While the pandemic has forced many to put their travel plans on hold, with this funding, we will be in an even better position to welcome visitors back after the pandemic. In addition to benefiting our neighbourhoods and creating local jobs, these regional initiatives, such as new outdoor art installations in public gathering spaces around Metro Vancouver, will give people more reasons to explore our backyard and see more of what the area has to offer.”

Allison Colthorp, executive director, Tourism Chilliwack –

“This financial investment from the Province will have a significant impact on the continued development of the ‘Experience the Fraser’ project. This project was formed as a partnership between the regional districts, municipalities and First Nations along the Fraser River as a means to strengthen connections between communities, residents and visitors. We look forward to working in collaboration with our partners to move this great project forward.”

Learn More:

For a backgrounder listing approved projects and costs, visit: https://news.gov.bc.ca/files/TRTD_Master_List_Initiatives_May2021.pdf

For more information on StrongerBC, visit: https://strongerbc.gov.bc.ca/

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Tourism Vancouver’s CEO on Steering The Future of Urban Travel

SkiftX + Skift

March 13th, 2018 at 5:38 PM EDT

Many heavily visited cities have a whole host of issues to collectively address based on the challenges of overtourism and the opportunities provided by new connectivity platforms. Here's a deep-dive masterclass on how Vancouver is tackling the future.

This post is original content created by the  SkiftX  brand strategy team for our Skift Cities platform.  Learn more about what SkiftX can do for partners here .

This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner.

Vancouver has never really had a tourism brand.

The city has succeeded as a travel destination largely based on its image and reputation as one of the world’s most beautiful, livable, and progressive urban environments. In 2017, Vancouver welcomed more than 10.3 million overnight visitors — the fourth consecutive year with record tourist arrivals.

However, Vancouver is long overdue for a specific travel brand promise that transcends its physical drama at the intersection of the Rocky Mountains, Pacific Ocean and downtown core. And one that goes beyond the open-mindedness, diversity and inclusivity baked into the city’s social fabric.

Therefore,  Tourism Vancouver  is developing a new destination marketing and development strategy leveraging the rise of global demand for transformative travel experiences.

“We believe we are a place, if we go to the essence of the brand, that connects people and inspires them to live with passion,” explains Ty Speer, president and CEO of Tourism Vancouver. “Based on our surveys and research in our origin markets, we’re pretty comfortable with the idea that people are coming to Vancouver to reconnect with themselves, reconnect with others, and have a bit of a small, medium or large life-changing moment in time.”

To deliver on that strategy over the long run, Vancouver needs to maintain the quality of its urban user experience for both locals and visitors, which is challenging in the face of record growth year-over-year. To address that, the public and private sectors have been following mandates from the 2013  Vancouver Tourism Master Plan  to inform sustainable development.

Among the primary takeaways from the master plan, the city has to continue to preserve and improve the integrity of the built and natural environments, and how people move between the two. More can also be done to help a wider breadth of the community benefit from inbound tourism, especially by dispersing visitors beyond Stanley Park and the urban center. And, the city needs to ramp up its leadership in smart city infrastructure to connect the visitor and local economies more effectively.

The master plan is presently being updated with a new Vancouver 2030 strategy report developed in partnership with Resonance Consultancy and Tourism Economics . Due out this summer, the new policy framework addresses growing threats related to overtourism, spiraling real estate costs, infrastructure capacity, labor shortages and climate warming, etc., through the end of the next decade.

It also investigates potential opportunities in smart technology, community building and advanced placemaking, among others.

“The Vancouver 2030 process analyzed both demographic and economic factors in each of Vancouver’s specific source markets to forecast future visitor volume,” explains Chris Fair, president of Resonance. “We then identified key supply-side factors that could accelerate or constrain that growth, which led to the creation of different distinct scenarios that outline a range of ways these forces might interact with each other to shape Vancouver’s tourism industry over the next decade.”

Vancouver has long been at the forefront of smart and sustainable tourism development. But like many global cities, the convergence of shifting urban economics, evolving travel consumer behavior and heightened competitiveness is rewriting the rules of destination marketing and management.

We sat down with Speer to discuss many of these themes in-depth, and how Tourism Vancouver and the city are collaborating to design the future of urban travel. The following has been edited for length.

Skift: What can you tell us about your new tourism brand strategy and campaign you’re gearing up to launch this year?

Ty Speer:  We are in the final length of finishing up a new destination brand for Vancouver, which is really ironic because there hasn’t been one, so it’s not as though we’re re-branding, we’re actually branding. When you look around, you see the city brand or an economic commission brand or a Tourism Vancouver company brand, but the destination brand hasn’t been articulated.

One of the great things a lot of Vancouver residents often hear, which really brings home the message of why people want a taste of life here, is we get so many visitors who within a matter of hours say, “Wow. I could really see myself living here.” Right? That’s such a Vancouver thing to hear, and that says a lot about the brand that’s in that transformative travel piece.

I’m not expecting somebody to come here and have their entire life changed. We are happy to help someone come here and say, “You know what? I had a few days of just living a different way, and living the Vancouver way. And after sampling that, there was a change that I was able to make. One that I can integrate into part of my life when I go back home.” That’s firmly in our brand architecture.

Skift: When you say Vancouver is a platform for transformative travel opportunities, how does Canada’s long legacy of acceptance — celebrating diversity, inclusivity, openness, and progressive shared values — fit into that?

Speer: Well, that acceptance piece, to think about that for a second, is really, really important for us, and it came out very clearly in the brand work we did. During the process, somebody made the point that Vancouver is a city that’s really tolerant of all forms of cultures and races. But then somebody else said, “Actually, wait a minute. Tolerant is the opposite of what we are. We’re not tolerant, we’re absolutely accepting.”

For us, the fact that we are a very, very harmonious city with a huge blend of immigrants and locals to us is a really interesting thing. For people coming here, we’re amazingly approachable when it comes to learning something new about Chinese culture, or First Nations culture, or improving the environment, or how Canadians value community and innovation. Yeah, that part to us is a really, really important piece.

Skift: How has the Vancouver Tourism Master Plan influenced the development of the visitor economy in the last few years?

Speer:  We’ve pushed forward a whole range of things that came out of the Tourism Master Plan, which was a helpful exercise on two fronts. It was very good in terms of bringing together our industry and organizations outside of our industry that are important to what we need to do. It was also good in articulating a whole range of things that, if done, would make a positive impact. In many ways, it was a massive optioneering document.

If you look at just a sample of specific things that we’ve acted on, there was a recommendation in the master plan to formalize a structure to pursue sports events, so we started that in 2014 with Sport Hosting Vancouver . We’ve built that up and that’s a pipeline obviously for events that attract visitors. Public Wi-Fi was in there, and we’ve worked very closely with the city as they’ve wanted to push their Wi-Fi agenda forward.

Also, Northeast False Creek is probably the biggest land development project that will happen over the next 20 years. We’ve been, as much as we can, right in the middle of that with the things that we think the visitor industry needs. Special events and programming is another, over and above sports. So there’s been a whole range of things where we said, “Okay, we’re going to focus on these now because we’ve got to get to a level of achievability.”

Skift: For visitors to keep saying, “Wow, I could really see myself living here,” Vancouver needs to make sure it doesn’t become a victim of its own success 15 years from now. How does the new Vancouver Tourism 2030 address that?

Speer: We need to continue to refresh our view of the future, so we’ve worked with Chris Fair and his team at Resonance to come at that from a different point of view. It’s a scenario and planning analysis. We’ve looked at a whole range of factors that you first take in isolation, and then you begin to blend those to get to, as close as anybody can, what the world might look like in 2030. And then we looked at the correlation between what it might look like and what we want it to look like. So, how do we begin to define the right mix of likely outcomes and desirable outcomes?

We also have Tourism Economics as a partner this time, so we’ve got a lot of economic analysis underpinning it, which wasn’t in the tourism master plan. The tourism master plan wasn’t a data-driven exercise; it was really a strategic and stakeholder-driven exercise. This is a much more analytical piece of work, so we’ve been able to assess, “If this factor dominates, what does that mean to our growth pattern? If that factor dominates, what does that mean if this eventuality happens?” Tourism Economics has been great about that, so we’ve got a good mix of strategy and analysis to help us look at scenarios that we think are appealing, and then help us realize them.

Skift: You mentioned that you’re supporting the City of Vancouver’s agenda to roll out public Wi-Fi. How does that benefit the visitor economy?

Speer: We’ve been looking at access to free Wi-Fi for a while. The city did phase one a couple years ago, which was very much underpinned by use of city infrastructure and libraries and community centers, so it didn’t have the reach we need. But they’ve now done phase two with Shaw Communications, which leverages infrastructure and Shaw’s hotspots, and now there’s much better coverage. So we’re now in a position where we can put a message out to our visitors that says, “You don’t have to go to Starbucks every time to get free Wi-Fi. You can log into this.” That really unlocks our ability to say, “Now that there’s a platform in place where we don’t have to have a conversation about roaming charges, what do we need to think about in terms of how we enable a smarter way for visitors to experience Vancouver?” We’re kind of in the middle of that right now.

Skift: So, the goal then is that blanket Wi-Fi means greater conversion? Travelers are more likely to access partner content and more likely to buy?

Speer: Well, it can be a number of things. Clearly, information is one. That’s great. We want to be able to do that. We know, as well, that a lot of visitors make a whole number of decisions in destinations to plan their experience. Like, “What restaurant should I choose?” Or, “I don’t know what I’m going do today, I’ll wait on the weather. Oh, it’s a nice day, okay, now I want to go to Grouse Mountain.”

How do we help enable that? We’re already in the ticket-selling business, so if you go downstairs to the tourism and visitor center you can buy a ticket to a whole range of things, but that’s a regional shelf front. Now, we want to take that regional shelf front and represent our members online with more transactional capability. Then, within as short a space as possible, we’ve provided visitors with a service that ultimately helps our members benefit.

But we’d like for it to also extend beyond that. We’ve got a little bit of work to do on this, but I would hope in time it allows us to go back and say, “How’d we do?” We all live and die in the recommendation economy, so we want the ability to go back and say, after an experience, “How was Grouse Mountain? How was Capilano? How was Stanley Park?”

But then, we also want to roll up to where we can say, “Here’s a proxy on the destination.” Every destination is a sum total of every experience and everybody’s opinion, so how are we doing as a destination? Because in the end, if some parts of the destination do really well, but other parts don’t, then you’ve got a dead weight problem. We want to deliver that visitor experience quality everywhere.

Skift: CitizenLab is a crowdsourcing platform that works with cities in Europe to pull citizen feedback on all types of urban themes. They’re expanding into North America for the first time to collaborate with the City of Vancouver on the Canadian government’s Smart Cities Challenge . Couldn’t a platform like that be used to close the feedback loop from visitors?

Speer:  It’s the how. I think it’s easy to understand what you would like to do, and probably easy to understand why you’d like to do it, but how you do it is hard. I’m really interested. We’re not in conversation with CitizenLab ourselves. That may be something worth doing. I think what’s really interesting in that space is on two levels. One, and I’ll have to interrogate their platform, is where we could easily have that conversation with visitors to understand the good, the bad, and areas for improvement across the entire destination experience.

The other, which is very important to us, is the right means to engage with our citizens to make sure that we have our finger on the pulse about how they feel about visitors. Right? I think we’re the type of industry that local people should be proud and supportive of. I don’t want to just be accepted as an industry. I want tourism to be appreciated and valued and embraced by our residents. That’s got to be where we are.

People have got to know us and love us that live here, so it has to be a lot more than, “Yeah, it’s all right. Okay, we’ll put up with it.” No way. We’ve got to be much better than that, so these platforms and other initiatives allow us to understand how residents feel. I think they should eventually, and by eventually I mean in the next 12 to 24 months, be a core business vision for every DMO (destination marketing organization).

Skift: Sustainable tourism development is a huge conversation worldwide, but not only in terms of land and urban environmental integrity, but also equitable economic development. Considering Vancouver’s record tourism numbers year-over-year, how are you addressing long-term growth to ensure that a wider breadth of Vancouverites benefit?

Speer: Everything I said a moment ago about wanting to be an industry that’s appreciated and embraced relates to a lot about the sustainability of our industry. The starting point is if people don’t like you, that’s a risk to your industry. That’s number one. Number two is about making sure that we’re continuing to create opportunities and knowledge that help our industry businesses to be community builders, so they contribute to the communities that they operate in.

We’re arguably as significant in size and scale as any industry in the city, and like in most parts of the world, people don’t know that. The tourism industry is famous for being unloved, or invisible or under appreciated. So it’s very important that we get that message out that we make a contribution to the quality of life here. From a sustainability discussion, just take the restaurant sector as an example. The restaurant sector doesn’t fundamentally look at us and say, “Tourism is the most important market for us.” For them, the bulk of their revenue comes from locals. We totally understand that, but restaurants operate on really, really thin margins, and if 5 or 10 percent of their visitors are tourists, that might make the difference between a restaurant making it or not making it.

Or a festival making it or not making it, or an art exhibit being profitable or not being profitable. Although we operate at the margins from a scale point of view for lots of businesses, it’s also the difference between success and failure because we’re adding that extra contribution. So when we look at our broader purpose of why we’re here and what we do, it really is about adding to the reputation of the city and the quality of life here.

Skift: In other worlds, the conversation around the impact of destination marketing and management extends well beyond jobs, tourist spend, and tax base.

Speer:  Absolutely. It’s not just about 65,000 jobs and $5 billion of economic contribution. It’s about this place is what it is, in part, because we make the contribution that we make. If we weren’t here, if you took us all out, lots of things would just start to shrink and fall over. That’s important to us from a sustainability point of view because it’s about sustaining the quality of life.

There are other more discrete things. We’re big believers in promoting simple things for visitors around public transport and walkability. Those are critical to being true to what the city is about. We’re big believers in promoting the opportunity to go rent a bike and pedal around the city. I think one of the biggest challenges with the word “sustainability” is every time you use is, somebody has a different definition. Sustainability for a lot of people is the environment, but if you look at the bigger picture, it’s all about long-term viability.

Skift: At Skift, we always talk about how cities are no longer cities. They’re networks of neighborhoods attracting different traveler segments. How are you striving to enhance the long-term viability of your neighborhoods outside the downtown core?

Speer:  I think it’s important to always put into context that we’re a member-driven company, so we have about 1,000 members that we represent. We’re always thinking about how can we do as much as we can to serve up business opportunity for members. So that marries well with international transit people who are looking for — I almost hesitate to use it because it’s so overused — authentic experiences.

We go to great lengths promoting our different neighborhoods to say, “Okay, here’s a real Vancouver story for you to be part of.” It makes a lot of sense, especially for people that are interested in something a little bit different and are kind of on that wave. I don’t want to reduce it to, “This is what millennials do,” because usually when we say that it’s wrong. But it does allow us to speak to people in a different way, and of course it means trends like home-sharing and Airbnb.

It’s important that we’re able to say, “Look, Commercial Drive is a great day out.” It’s really interesting and a very different part of Vancouver. It’s not about mountains and water anymore and it’s not about a downtown experience. It’s about a neighborhood with interesting shops and interesting restaurants, and it’s easy to get to. So it’s all about continually reintroducing new chapters, and in an ideal world, maybe that gives somebody a reason to say, “You know what? I’m going to tack on a day.” In our world, as with any destination, one extra overnight stay times a large number of visitors is a massive contribution to all of our businesses and the destination.

Skift: A lot of tourism leaders are now promoting their local makers more to show the creative spirit of their indie entrepreneurs, and how they define and develop a neighborhood. It’s the whole Brooklynization or ‘Keep Portland Weird’ thing where local shops selling bamboo sunglasses or artisanal donuts create a more unique community identity. Does that resonate with you?

Speer: It sort of does. I think eventually you have to work backwards from how can you connect to the people. I’m not sure it’s maker-forward as much as it’s consumer-backward, right? Where is the consumer and how do I work backwards to extract something that’s of interest to them and then connect it with something here? It’s not necessarily, “Go find someone and push them at people.” I’d rather be pulling, and asking, “What do you like? How do I meet your needs?”

So let’s say you’re interested in sustainably-made bamboo sunglasses. I’ve got a guy for that. Right? I think we’ve got to work backwards from the customer and not just kind of assume that we’ve got a bunch of cool people, and customers are going to care. Although, I think eventually those lines just connect.

We’re going to definitely want to expand on all those passion areas that we can find, related to our new brand vision, that we think are meaningful to consumers, and put a human face on them. There’s no doubt about that. But, for us, it will ultimately be more about, “How do I give you something that’s meaningful to you?” I want to find out what you want, and I want to be able to serve up some information that shifts you from, “Okay, I was thinking about coming to Vancouver” to now, “I’m definitely going to visit and I’m going to have a deeper experience.” Then, we’re back into that world of, if you want to call it “transformative travel,” where we can deliver a customized experience that’s more meaningful to you and makes your time in Vancouver all the better.

Skift: Speaking of deeper experiences, Airbnb Experiences offer some really interesting opportunities, like one we did called: “ Hang With a Vancouver Startup Founder .” British Columbia recently voted to collect provincial sales tax and bed tax from Airbnb . Does that shift how you might promote Airbnb and engage with the brand in any new ways?

Speer:  In a word, yes. We’ve said for the past three years, there were two major criteria for us to be able to work with Airbnb. One was regulation and the second was taxation. Because we felt without either of those, we’re just dealing in a non-official economy, and as the official representative of the visitors here and visitor businesses here, we just couldn’t be in that space. The regulation will come into effect on the first of April, and the province is going to collect those two taxes, so PST, provincial sales tax, and the MRDT, which is hotel tax.

I’ve said this to Airbnb, “When you guys become legitimate, we’re ready to go.” The missing piece for us, which we’ll sort out in the next little while, is we have to figure out what the right membership structure is because we’ve never dealt with anything like Airbnb and 5,000 hosts before.

We’re ready to go, but we probably won’t rush into it on the first of April. I think there’s a near-term evolution. We’ve got to monitor how compliance happens. If, out of 5,000 or 6,000 hosts, depending on how you count on a given day, nobody signs up, then I’m going to pause because regulation without compliance isn’t really the framework of legitimacy that we need. But assuming that Airbnb drives good compliance, and they’ve said they’ve got very specific plans to drive that compliance, I’m pleased about that. Assuming that happens, we’ll get a membership structure worked out and we will start that work.

So, as I mentioned, we’re ready to go. I’ve met with Airbnb recently. They want to do stuff, we want to do stuff. We’re one of their top 10 cities in the world. China’s the number one outbound market in the world. It’s not rocket science to connect the dots.

Skift: What’s the vibe from the hotels?

Speer:  Our hotel partners, which are core partners of ours, kind of moved past the “Airbnb is the enemy” thing a long time ago. The thinking now is that Airbnb just represents more competition. Nobody wants more competition, but I’m not dealing with hotel partners saying, “Make that go away.” They’ve moved on.

Skift: How might you work with Airbnb to promote home-sharing in general, and Airbnb Experiences specifically?

Speer: Well, it all depends. We sit down with lots of our members and work on all kinds of different collaborative promotions. Sometimes it takes the form of member missions in market to sell things. Sometimes it’s trade shows or cooperative advertising. I’ve seen advertising campaigns that take all kinds of forms. We can do a big digital play of course because Airbnb is about as powerful a platform probably as any travel company ever, arguably.

There are any number of ways that we could probably sit down and say, “Okay, how do we go out and find people that might be potential Vancouver visitors and message them together.” We could be a content provider to Airbnb. We’ve got some great destination content that might fit really well on their site.

Skift: So just to sum up, platforms like CitizenLab and Airbnb have been successful connecting the private and public sectors, and people to people, very effectively. So, ideally, it seems that an organization like Tourism Vancouver should eventually be able to plug into that some way to deliver more customized connectivity, right? That’s basically a big part of the premise behind smart cities and smart tourism.

Speer: Sure, of course, and it’s on our mind. Absolutely on our mind. I want those tools to be available, but I think the other thing we have to be mindful of is, Airbnb will do it anyway. They don’t necessarily need me; they’re in that space. There are other things, including tours by locals, and there are other different platforms out there where people are making businesses out of their local expertise and their local passions. It certainly will be part of how we take the passion idea, I think, to market

If somebody’s into seafood, how do we deliver on that? Somebody’s into yoga, how do we do that? Somebody’s into paddle boarding or scuba, how do we do that? I want to think about how we solve all of that, but I’m also mindful that there’ll only be a subset of our visitor base who really wants to go that deep. Some people will still say, “You know what? I want to go to Vancouver and I want to go on a cruise to Alaska. I want to spend a couple nights in a nice hotel. I want to appreciate fresh air, beautiful scenery, some nice meals, a little bit of culture.” They’re not going to go deep.

We’ve got to be in a position to say, “Okay, Greg is going to go deep. How do we help that? Sally is not going to go deep. We’ve got all of that.” Again, I’m a big believer in working back from the customer point of view, so we’ve got to be able to serve up as much or as little depth as somebody wants. It’s about understanding who our visitors are, and how we can help them.

The above content was produced by the branded content SkiftX team for the Skift Cities platform, defining how cities are connecting their visitor and innovation economies.

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Tags: skift cities , tourism , vancouver

Photo credit: Northeast False Creek, Vancouver. Tourism Vancouver

Vancouver City Council finalizes tourism plan

Committee aims to attract more visitors to vancouver.

Just in time for the summer swarm of tourists, the city of Vancouver has finalized a 25-page tourism plan designed to attract visitors to the city.

The master destination plan , created by Visit Vancouver WA, the city and a steering committee, intends to guide businesses and organizations to make Vancouver as tourist friendly as possible as the city continues to grow.

“The overall idea with the plan is that Vancouver has changed a lot in the last five, 10 years,” said Erica Lindemann, director of marketing at Visit Vancouver WA. “The whole idea is to get the community on board and grasp what tourism can do for the economy and how we can all stand together to increase or improve the experience in Vancouver for both visitors and residents.”

The steering committee that created the plan used strategic recommendations to narrow the scope of the 10-year guide. The plan focuses on engaging local businesses, enhancing mobility and public access, strengthening Vancouver’s outdoor recreation opportunities, and solidifying Vancouver’s tourism identity.

Lindemann said tourists have started spending more time in Vancouver, the second largest city in the Portland metro area.

“We’re kind of becoming a destination. … We are Washington’s fourth largest city and still growing, and so I think we’re finally getting the recognition that we deserve,” she said.

The numbers support this. In 2021, more than 4.1 million people visited Clark County, generating a daily economic impact of $1.42 million, according to the report.

Tourism bolsters small businesses, restaurants, stores, and perhaps most significantly, hotels. By the end of this year, Clark County will reach more than 3,600 hotel rooms — a 44 percent increase over the past 10 years, the report states.

The plan includes goals with smaller scopes as well, such as improving playgrounds and increasing wheelchair accessible paths.

Though most of Vancouver’s tourists flock to the waterfront and downtown, Lindemann said the plan will benefit the entire city.

“People come because of the waterfront, but then they disseminate to Fort Vancouver and Fourth Plain International District and all these other awesome areas of Vancouver,” she said.

In addition to the plan, Visit Vancouver WA prepared funding projections and recommendations for Vancouver, which receives nearly all of its tourism funding from the city’s lodging tax and tourism promotion area funds.

The nonprofit suggested the city adopt a tourism improvement district, which the city would invest in specifically to attract more tourists.

“(Tourism improvement districts) create a platform for the industry to establish an ‘industry-led’ revenue stream that bolsters a collaborative environment to raise all boats within a community,” the report states. “Based on our research, the implementation of a (tourism improvement district) would be the ideal short-term goal to increase the available funding for Visit Vancouver Washington.”

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What is the Vancouver Plan?

Approved by City Council on July 22, 2022, the Vancouver Plan is an historic long-range land use strategy to create a more livable, affordable and sustainable city for everyone. It guides the long-term growth of the city in an intentional way, clarifying where growth and change will occur over the next 30 years.

Through a multi-year public engagement process, we heard unequivocally that residents want specific actions to create more housing, support the local economy, and address the climate crisis.

Vancouver Plan Timeline

The process and timeline are influenced by what we hear and learn along the way and our sustained recovery effort from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Phase 1: Listen and Learn + Recovery

Fall 2019 - september 2020*.

*Note, short-term community recovery actions will be integrated into the work through January 2021

Phase 2: Developing Emerging Directions

October 2020 – july 2021, phase 3: policy and land use ideas, august 2021 – november 2021, phase 4: revising and final plan, december 2021 – july 2022, phase 5: implementation strategy, summer 2022+, acknowledging the unceded homeland of the musqueam, squamish and tsleil-waututh nations.

This place is the unceded and ancestral homelands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations (the Nations), and has been traditionally stewarded by them since time immemorial. These lands continue to be occupied by settlers, and Indigenous Peoples face ongoing dispossession and colonial violence. Despite systematic and institutional efforts to eradicate their communities and cultures, the resilience, strength, and wisdom of the Nations have allowed them to revitalize their languages and cultures, and exercise sovereignty over their lands .

Recognizing the lives, cultures, languages, and peoples of this land, the Vancouver Plan seeks to build on our commitment as a City of Reconciliation. Working together with the Nations on the Vancouver Plan and on further work to come, we hope to strengthen reciprocal relationships with each of the three Nations to ensure we move forward together toward a city truly worthy of this amazing place. Settler Vancouver residents have a responsibility to the Nations and Indigenous Peoples that have stewarded these lands to tangible actions and a commitment to Reconciliation through decolonization.

What’s Next

Now that the Vancouver Plan has been approved, it is the City’s strategic land use framework, guiding more detailed plans and policies to come.  

Council-approved motions directing staff to consider how renter protections and developer contributions will be included as part of the implementation of this Plan.  

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Tourism Master Plan for Vancouver

• June 22, 2013

Vancouver has its first ever tourism master plan, developed by Resonance Consultancy, and set to align city and industry interests over a 10-year period.

Tourism Vancouver will work with the city and the port on future development on infrastructure, said a spokesperson for Resonance. He said they are also cognizant of the Lion’s Gate bridge which may not be tall enough for future ships, and new cruise facilities outside the bridge may eventually be considered.

Meanwhile, he said Tourism Vancouver would like to see the recent uptick in cruise traffic continue to build and get past 2015 and the yet unknown ECA impact, before taking the next step.

In the big picture, the master plan analyzes gaps, identified opportunities and establishes priorities to ensure the tourism industry grows in an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable manner, according to Resonance.

The firm stated that an overarching ambition of the plan is to enhance the alignment between the city administration and the tourism business, including the formalization of an ongoing group of city, industry and tourism partnership to oversee master plan actions and report back to industry and residents.

The full report will be completed in early July.

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Cultural master plan

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The new chair of Tourism Vancouver comes with a unique background – one that’s sure to contribute to the organization’s 10-year vision.

With a bachelor’s degree in music from UBC and experience as a symphony performer, orchestra manager and, currently, executive director of the Arts Club Theatre, Brian Jeng has been immersed in cultural activities for decades. And culture is now the key word for Tourism Vancouver.

“I thought cultural tourism was an oxymoron,” said Jang, who took over from James Terry earlier this year. “A lot of the work I was doing was around developing a local marketplace [for symphony, ballet, etc.] as opposed to a tourism marketplace, so I never got my head around the role tourism plays in developing an arts-and-culture framework.

“I never realized how the cultural organizations and cultural fabric of a city is actually part of its destination, part of its soul.”

What Jang started to appreciate was that culture “is the calling card for some of the greatest cities.”

“I’m thrilled to take people to the restaurants here,” he said “And I view that as the cultural attraction.”

At Tourism Vancouver’s AGM in June, the focus was on a master plan for Vancouver 2020.

“Culture has become a bigger part of the framework of how we position Vancouver,” Jang said. “It’s my intention and my hope that this is the beginning of a decade of culture ahead of us.”

Current international draws in the cultural realm include the culinary arts, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Museum of Anthropology.

“The connection to the aboriginal community is extremely exciting,” said Jang. “The work that the Bill Reid Gallery is doing and other visual arts are a huge opportunity.”

Jang said the PuSh festival, which takes place annually in January and February, is an internationally known festival, and it’s that kind of event Tourism Vancouver wants to draw attention to.

“When we talk about what a decade of culture means, the way that connects with our objectives and opportunities, we want to highlight every month one cultural event that is happening in Vancouver.”

Even what’s happening in terms of programming, music and visual arts in the Woodwards area is serving to revitalize Vancouver and provide a history of the city, Jang said.

“I’m very excited what Vancouver can do to partner with our cultural community.”

As a reflection of the work the tourism association is doing, Tourism Vancouver has changed its description from a destination marketing organization to a destination marketing and management organization.

“That’s a very significant change to take on,” said Jang, “not just the marketing but the management of positioning Vancouver as a world destination.”

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