I was in a meeting the other day. At the council meeting where I announced that Rainbird Excursions had closed permanently the City's Economic Development Manager, Pat Deakin mentioned that a webinar called The 20 Ingredients of an Outstanding Downtown was to be given the following morning. It was to be given by Roger Brooks, one of the foremost destination development consultants on the continent. I'd seen him speak before and he is very familiar with Canada and a great speaker with terrific ideas. So I went.
Afterward there was some talk about branding. There is a principle in marketing a town that there should be one major "anchor" attraction. But we have in the past all had difficulty on agreeing what that is. Two of the people present were very aggressive about putting recreational fishing forward as the main tourist attraction that Port Alberni has to offer. The phrase "Hooked on Port Alberni" came up. The beauty of it is that it could be used in all sorts of other similar ways: Hooked on Fishing, Hooked on trains, Hooked on Heritage, Hooked on Hiking, Hooked on Lady Rose Marine etc.
But I'm not convinced….yet.
"Hooked on" speaks to a pastime that is also immensely popular here among residents. But how popular is it among visitors? We have no idea! There are no statistics. None! Local fishermen, because they are passionate about fishing and there are lots of them here, will aggressively tell you that this is the main source of visitors. But they can't back it up with data
If you look at the small fishing charter operators around here, there is no local association that speaks for, lobbies for, or promotes recreational fishing. This makes it hard for the City, the Regional District and the Port Authority to liaise, with a representative who can inform them of issues like infrastructure, and promotion. There is a provincial association that does this, the Sport Fishing Institute of BC. Three of the charter operators here are members and 5 others who are lodges, gear shops or boat shops.
I looked at the number of salt water fishing licenses that have been sold in the province from 1981 to 2008 to see if there was a distinct trend. At the peak in 1991, 450,000 were sold. In 2008, it was 270,000. That's about a 40% drop. And the percent that were non-resident dropped from 27% in 1999 to 19% in 2008, the last year data was available. By the way, these figures came from a report titled A Vision for Recreational Fisheries in British Columbia 2009-2013 published by DFO and the Province of BC.
I spoke to Mike Surrell, owner of Lady Rose Marine. He made the point that he hears from fishermen almost every day that there are two major bottlenecks in the recreational fishing infrastructure: lousy access to boat fuel and not enough moorage. You can get fuel down a dusty gravel road or after 12 km boat ride at China Creek Marina. The other alternative is in the cramped, shallow quarters of Clutesi Haven Marina. Not being able to tie up a boat means the hassle of putting the boat in the water every morning and taking it out every evening. Clutesi haven is the only boat launch that is generally known despite there being another one in the harbour beside Harbour Quay Marina. But it is very steep. If the city aggressively promotes fishing here, visitors will be butting heads against this infrastructure issue even more. Promoting and infrastructure development need to go hand in hand.
I also asked Surrell how many passengers he books in a year. The answer is 14,000 -16,000! That's a surprisingly high number!
It makes me wonder how many people visit the McLean Mill and Ride the Steam Train in comparison.
And we have no idea how many visitors come to visit family, hike, or do their own thing.
As a community that desires to build a destination not just for tourism but for living in we need to gather some data. We can't just wing it. Crucial decisions need to be made and then followed through on, with everyone behind the decision. There must be consensus. And the consensus needs to be built on facts. Without Numbers the competing interests in the valley will continue to go round and round debating which facet of tourism is most deserving of being called the number one attraction.