As British Columbia enters phase 3 of reopening, Kootenay Rockies Tourism (KRT) is seeking public input on welcoming back visitors.
Factor 5 Consultant with the Creston Valley-Kootenay Lake Economic Action Partnership, Jesse Willicome outlined an online survey currently reaching out to individual communities regarding tourism in a COVID-19 climate.
“We’re trying to get a sense of the scale of travel that each community is comfortable with,” said Willicome. “So if they’re comfortable with people travelling from outside the community, all the way to with people travelling from outside the province, that allows each community to make up its own decisions as far as wide it wants to open those doors.”
Working in partnership with tourism businesses in the Kootenay Rockies region, represented by Community Destination Marketing Organizations, KRT’s Online Resident Sentiment Survey on Tourism focuses on individual communities.
“We’ll be able to split that data and each community will be able to see what the support is, or is not, for welcoming visitors,” Willicome added. “They’ll send Fernie specific results and those might be completely different from the results from, let’s say, Trail.”
The five to eight-minute survey begins by asking where people are from, and what comfort level they have with visiting local businesses. It then asks about the prospect of allowing out-of-town visitors to do the same. The survey proceeds to ask some of the harder questions, including where locals would welcome visitors from; ranging from inside the Kootenays to Inter-provincial travel or beyond Canada’s borders.
Those being surveyed will also weigh the importance of the tourism sector in their community, what impact it has, and how their community can safely move forward.
To take part in the Online Resident Sentiment Survey on Tourism follow this link: https://www.surveymonkey.ca/r/YSK9CT3
The window of opportunity to provide input is from June 29 to July 5, 2020.
