Powell River Visitor Information Centre will receive three more years of stable funding after Destination BC recently announced its new tourist marketing plan for the province.
The new funding model is for small rural visitor information centres and is additional to an innovation fund that will help the development of community-based, flexible visitor services.
Tourism Powell River (TPR) received notice that it will be provided $18,750 in each of 2016, 2017 and 2018. In previous years, the centre would get one year of funding at a time and the level would fluctuate, said Paul Kamon, director of TPR, the agency responsible for the information centre.
“It’s a small portion of what is needed to run the centre,” said Kamon.
For most visitor centres funding from the province alone is not enough to operate. Centres often rely on other sources of income, including selling merchandise.
“Some of them do up to $45,000 per year retail-wise,” said Tracey Ellis, manager of the visitor information centre.
Ellis explained that when she began work with the centre there was virtually no income from retail. Last year the centre sold $17,000 and this year she expects that number to jump another five to seven thousand dollars, she said.
“People want souvenirs,” said Ellis. “Postcards were really hard to find. Now we have lots.”
More international visitors came to Powell River this year than last, according to Kamon, and that’s a trend that may bode well for further development of tourism infrastructure and services.
Tourism statistics are up in Powell River were up 20 per cent in September over the same month last year, he said.
Across the province, Destination BC reported an increase in international visitors. An additional 72,085 visitors, almost a 10 per cent increase, came to BC in July 2015 compared to the same month in 2014.
Visitors from BC’s largest international market, the United States, rose 11.6 per cent, with an additional 56,182 visitors over July 2014. Other regions showing increases include People’s Republic of China up 8.3 per cent, Japan up 12.5 per cent, and India up 15.6 per cent.
The three-year stable funding model marks a plan to modernize the way visitor services are supported in the province with a goal is to enable a more flexible, innovative, community-based visitor services model, said a Destination BC spokesperson.
This summer Powell River received approximately $9,000 in funding from the pilot project of the innovation fund that Destination BC announced would go forward last month.
That money was used to create a mobile visitor information kiosk inside a renovated Boler travel trailer. Kamon said the the trailer has been repainted and is ready to have its decals applied.
Kamon said developing tourism infrastructure is a priority and TPR has been focusing on that with new map boards at both ferry terminals and putting up signs for the Sunshine Coast Trail head and Powell River Canoe Route locations.
“It was time to make an investment in our infrastructure,” said Kamon, “to match the experience you’ll have in our town.”
