10-year vision for Banff seeks to balance economy with community

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The brand new 12 months will convey a recent imaginative and prescient for the way forward for tourism in Banff Nationwide Park.

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A protracted-standing collaboration between governments and native companies has produced a draft plan to information customer use inside the park and surrounding area over the following decade.

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The Lead Tourism for Good 10-year imaginative and prescient for tourism in Banff and Lake Louise is a blueprint led by Banff and Lake Louise Tourism, with help from the Metropolis of Banff and Parks Canada. Group leaders and stakeholders had been additionally concerned within the course of.

The plan, which seeks to strike a stability between financial prosperity and the safety of cultural and neighborhood integrity, was authorized by Banff Council final month. Official help from Parks Canada remains to be in course of, with a last report anticipated in early 2023.

Leslie Bruce, president and CEO of Banff and Lake Louise Tourism, stated the pandemic and its results on the area illustrate how necessary a collaborative plan is to the long-term way forward for the park’s financial system and environmental sustainability.

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“The one largest factor is the necessity for resilience,” she stated. “The previous two and a half, virtually three years have proven us simply how dependent our neighborhood is on tourism and the customer financial system for our financial prosperity, but in addition as a big contributor to neighborhood well-being and even, frankly, as leaders in environmental stewardship.

“Our position may be very a lot about understanding the wants of our guests, understanding the buyer, after which actually serving to place our trade traditionally to adapt to these wants,” Bruce stated.

Requires Group Suggestions Final spring and summer season, greater than 2,000 nationwide park residents participated in knowledge and analysis critiques, seminars and workshops, and surveys, amongst different initiatives.

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One survey discovered that 92 % of residents worth residing near nature as necessary to their high quality of life. Congestion was additionally raised as an necessary subject for residents and trade companions, in addition to the necessity to develop the park as a extra sustainable vacation spot.

A need to develop significant and long-lasting relationships with the realm’s indigenous neighborhood to boost the reality and reconciliation course of was additionally a key discovering.

Suggestions helped information the creation of the Trails to Tomorrow, 5 key targets for the plan, which embody customer expertise, optimistic nature and local weather motion, neighborhood well-being, Indigenous connections and sensible tourism.

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Banff Mayor Corrie DiManno stated at a Dec. 19 council assembly that the city is dedicated to serving to obtain the plan’s targets.

“We labored very exhausting to convey our financial system again after the pandemic, and now we have to make Banff much more wonderful with a sustainable imaginative and prescient for our neighborhood to be resilient by means of the a long time,” she stated.

DiManno stated she’s thrilled to see the significance positioned on neighborhood well-being, as a result of whereas it may be tough to reside in a city that sees thousands and thousands of tourists annually, residents have an enormous position to play in its future success. of tourism progress.

“Though it’s known as a tourism imaginative and prescient, it goes past the customer financial system and the vacationer commerce. We heard loud and clear that that is about our communities and the way forward for anybody who chooses to reside within the park, so we have to take the steps to verify Banff has the kind of tourism we love.

“The customer financial system is our solely financial system, and its resilience and sustainability are important to us. There should not be us and them once we take into consideration Banff residents and the customer financial system – we’re all us.”

The plan is anticipated to be formally launched within the spring after extra conferences within the first quarter of 2023.

ocondon@postmedia.com