As re said, we need to look at the bigger picture. Hopefully the DMO will market Fernie as a four-season destination and promote us as a single entity with lots of activities and all the associated facilities our visitors require.
People are complaining that the trickle down effect does not help them, but how are we supposed to measure something like that? Think of all the hospitality and tourism employees in town who can only stay because of the tourist dollar that pays their wages – where do they buy their groceries, get their car fixed, replace their kitchen, watch a hockey match, take a sick pet?
Fernie is now at the point where everyone must start to pull together, or we all lose out.
Adventuresource, I understand where you are coming from on the fees, but how on earth are they supposed to be done fairly for everyone? Raft companies have enormous expenses – equipment gets lost or broken, buses need maintenance, every raft needs it’s own guide. The river season is no more reliable than your snow season – at the start the river can be running too high to be safe, rafts can’t go out in a lightning storm, and anytime between July and October the river can get too low to run without adequate rainfall. This applies to all adventure operators, and capacity is only limited by the resources you have. Given enough new visitors, you could expand your business, take on more guides, dogs and sleds and end up with the biggest dogsledding company in Canada.
I think it is great that you are 98% booked, but I can assure you nobody else is. Most hotels and motels are running at around 50-65% yearly occupancy and the fact that you still don’t need reservations to rent skis or bikes even at the peak of the appropriate season, suggests we are nowhere near the capacity we should be in terms of visitor numbers.
If we are going to continue to build accommodations at such ridiculous speed, we have to find some way to fill them.
seasonsgreetings
