At the end of last November I sent the following letter to the Alberni Valley Times. They refused to publish it; offering instead, to possibly dig into for a story. The editor went on to say that "...they are quite tight-lipped", meaning that Alberni Valley Tourism doesn't want to talk about it. The editor believes that one should have both sides of the story, I guess. But I contend that there are nothing but facts in this and that AVT can reacto to it, but they can't deny the facts. So I'm publishing it here.
Dear Editor, When I was first on the board of Alberni Valley Tourism, it consisted of stakeholders from the hotel/motels, the attraction and the tour operators. It was funded through a 2% hotel tax. The Regional District had passed a bylaw that created the tax and it had also made a contract with the Alberni Valley Chamber of Commerce to provide tourism marketing, programs and projects for the Alberni Valley. The Chamber had set up a tourism Advisory Council (Alberni Valley Tourism) and these funds would be spent through this council. Alberni Valley Tourism went to considerable expense and effort to create a brand and a logo. Whether you like it or not is a different issue. But it was now out there. It belonged to the community through taxes paid by visitors. Since then everything has changed. Gradually all parties dropped out of Alberni Valley Tourism except for the owners of four accommodations providers, of the Barclay hotel, the Hospitality Inn, the Somass Motel and the Howard Johnson. The tax bylaw has expired and the agreement with the Chamber of Commerce has as well. It expired because the chair and the treasurer of Alberni Valley Tourism let it. They felt they could get more money out of the City and Regional District through some sort of grant. They were mistaken. No money was forthcoming. So now, Alberni Valley Tourism is entirely privately funded by four accommodations providers whose objectives are to put heads in their beds, rather than to promote tourism in the valley. And now the logo, the website and all the other taxpayer funded assets of Alberni Valley Tourism no longer belong to the valley. This is  thanks to the mayor, John Douglas, and councillor Cindy Solda, who moved and seconded a motion of the Regional District to authorise their association (Alberni Valley Tourism Association) to use the logo, website and promotional materials that had been generated over the last 5 years. It's a sad situation. The Chamber of Commerce is left with a bad taste in its mouth, and wants little to do with destination marketing tourism, there is no publicly funded tourism marketing organization that speaks for the entire tourism industry of the valley, and the privately funded one won't return calls from at least two businesses that have enquired about joining it. Sandy McRuer Past owner of Rainbird Excursions