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Tourism board extends open arms to town council
Mac Olsen
for South Peace News
Lesser Slave Lake Regional Tourism is inviting the Town of High Prairie to become a member.
George Wright and Kathy Wright, the marketing and managing directors respectively, made a presentation to High Prairie town council Dec. 9.
“We’d like to invite High Prairie back,” says George Wright.
He’s referring to two years ago, when the Town of High Prairie discontinued its membership with Big Lakes Country Tourism. The BLCT has been renamed Lesser Slave Lake Regional Tourism, although the BLCT logo is being used in the Wrights’ business cards.
George Wright highlighted tourism activity in the region in 2009. First, visitors contribute over $30 million to the regional economy annually and promoting and marketing the region’s services and attractions is becoming increasingly important.
“With 1,000 hotel rooms and more than 2,000 campsites in the region, each community benefits from the dollars that visitors spend,” he says in a letter to town council.
The LSLRT has been promoting the region by attending trade shows, including Grande Prairie and Fort St. John and will attend more in 2010. The LSLRT has also received over $70,000 from Travel Alberta North for events and projects in the region, as well as over $150,000 in total marketing dollars spent.
“The Lesser Slave Lake Region has never had this level of marketing exposure before,” he says, adding social media such as Facebook and Twitter are an important of promotion.
The LSLRT also has the Lesser Slave Regional Visitor Information Centre in Slave Lake. Open year round, the centre had 5,200 visitors through the May long weekend to September long weekend period.
Travel Alberta helped to train the centre staff and the staff for the Town of High Prairie, Swan Hills and Wabasca were invited to take it, too. Later, they called campground operators in the region weekly to find out about their vacancy rates.
“We were able to then direct people to campgrounds that had vacancies. Feedback from the operators around the region (was) very positive, with many of them reporting their best year ever,” says Wright.
When the subject returned to the Town of High Prairie’s membership, he said the cost would be the base rate of $17,611 plus $1 per capita.
Mayor Rick Dumont invited the Wrights to make a presentation to council. He says they have done well in developing the LSLRT and council would take their request into consideration during their budget deliberations.
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