The Prince George Huber Equipment Rodeo that’s coming to Exhibition Park this weekend will bring some of the province’s best amateur contestants to the city for a full eight-event slate of roping and riding and that’s a breath of fresh air for Tourism Prince George CEP Colin Carson.
He’s been waiting nearly two years for the city’s events planners to get back in the saddle after getting bucked out of their seats by a stubborn pandemic.
“Events are back and it’s really exciting,” said Carson.
“We use the sport tourism economic assessment model through Sport Tourism Canada to estimate the economic impact of sports events and the Canadian Native Fastball Championships (coming to Carrie Jane Gray Park, July 29-31) will contribute something in the neighbourhood of $3 million (through direct and indirect spending on hotels, restaurants, stores and other services provided by local businesses).”
Tourism PG has two methods of tracking tourist visits to the city and neither provide accurate information about the how many people actually use Prince George as a stopping point on their holiday tours. A small percentage of tourists walk through the doors of the downtown visitor centre on First Avenue, where staff are on hand to meet and greet them and offer tips on what to see and do during their visits. The other measuring stick is the three per cent hotel tax every guest who books one of the 2,300 hotel rooms in the city has to pay.
“The hotel tax during COVID was really healthy and well-maintained, not necessarily through tourists, a lot of that was industry keeping hotel rooms busy,” said Carson. “The numbers at the visitor centre the last two years was extremely low (but) our hotel room revenue that funds us was actually quite good.”
The hotel room tax was instituted in 2010 and for the first seven years it was two per cent of the total cost of a room. In 2017 the tax was increased to three per cent. In 2021, the tax provided Tourism PG $1.3 million to find its marketing programs, up from $963,000 in 2020 and $1.2 million in 2019 and 2018. August 2021 was a record month, providing $187,000 boost to the Tourism PG budget. Hoteliers obviously saw the value in the tax and voted to extend it for another five years through July 1, 2026.
Of that three per cent tax, two-tenths of a per cent goes to a provincial Tourism Events Program which all tourism offices in the province can apply for. In 2021 it gave Tourism PG an additional $500,000 for marketing, a total which exceeded the $330,00 the Prince George community put into the provincial fund.
Tourism PG has two objectives, to promote the city and its attractions as a destination market to attract visitors, which is where the hotel tax income must be spent. Its other purpose is to provide information for tourists at the visitor centre. The service agreement with the city provides $330,000 annually and that money is used to fund the visitor centre. The organization employs seven full-time staff and five summer students and Carson says there are about 80,000 unofficial tourism boosters in the city who can help spread the word about what the city has to offer.
“Everyone touches tourists and we like to call Prince George residents local ambassadors, so if you’re at the Father’s Day Show and Shine this weekend or at a restaurant and some happens to chat you up that’s a great opportunity to provide some helpful tips about things you like to do,” said Carson. “People that live in Prince George love living here and often we don’t do a good enough job of talking about how nice of a place it is to live and visit.”
Tourism PG shares its building at 1300 First Ave. with the VIA Rail train station. The downtown location misses north-south traffic along Highway 97 and is situated in a part of the city that attracts homeless people and the organization has struck a task force to decide if it will remain there. Kamloops has gone mobile and closed its visitor centre and its staff now provides only remote location service at events, parks, hotels and city attractions where visitors congregate.
Tourism PG provides remote services on a smaller scale. Staff make regular appearances at the local farmers’ markets and they will be out in full force at National Indigenous People’s Day next Tuesday at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park. The event calendar is filling up again this summer after two years of crowd-size restrictions and a health-system push to discourage close contact with groups to help reduce the spread of COVID.
The rodeo this weekend is one of several significant sporting events on tap this summer for P.G. From July 21-24, 2,800 athletes in 30 sports are coming to the city for the B.C. Summer Games. The following weekend, the 46th annual Canadian Native Fastball Championships will bring close to 80 teams to the city. The Prince George Kodiaks are joining the B.C. Junior Football Conference as an expansion team this summer and that will bring hundreds of visitors to the city for the Kodiaks five home games at Masich Place Stadium, starting Aug. 6 when they host the Kamloops Broncos.
The following month, on Aug. 6, the Vanderhoof International Airshow will bring visitors to our Vanderhoof neighbours, 100 kilometres west, filling up hotel rooms and bringing customers to local shops and restaurants. The B.C. Northern Exhibition is also back on the summer calendar and it will attract fairgoers to Exhibition Park for four days of fun and activities, Aug. 18-21.
Music lovers will welcome back Cariboo Rocks the North when the outdoor classic rock festival returns to CN Centre parking lot Aug. 5-7, with 11 bands including Nazareth, April Wine, Prism, Tom Cochrane, Trooper and Sweet. Country music fans are also in for a treat when the Best Damn Music Festival takes over the CN Centre outdoor stage, Aug 12-13, showcasing the likes of Corb Lund, Dean Brody, Rick Stavely, Brett Kissell, Hunter Brothers and Aaron Pritchett.
Tourism PG has adopted the slogan, Base Camp to the North, knowing the city is not a destination most tourists target for week-long stays. Most are traveling through the city on their way to Alaska, Prince Rupert or Jasper or to take advantage of outdoor recreational opportunities in the region and they don’t stay in the city for more than a couple days.
“If Smithers is running a tourism campaign, those people are coming to Prince George and at the minimum they’re buying fuel here and spending money here, so anyone going through northern B.C. is coming through here and that benefits us,” said Carson. “That’s a big part of the visitor centre and visitor services; they’re already here so can we convince them to stay a little longer by providing things for them to do.”
