Duane Hicks
While the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association and several other groups are speaking out against the proposed re-drawing of travel regions across the province, which would see Sunset Country folded into a massive region stretching from Sault Ste. Marie to the Manitoba border, Tourism minister Monique Smith said she can’t promise what will happen down the road.
At its annual general meeting and conference held here last week, NOMA passed a resolution stating the existing organizations in Northwestern Ontario—Sunset Country Travel Association and North of Superior Tourism Association—be retained and renamed as Destination Marketing and Management Organizations (DMMOs), and that the boundaries of both remain as they are today.
But Smith said during Friday’s “bear pit” session that the province hopes to have the new travel regions in place by next year, and stakeholders will get their say later this month, with public consultations slated in Kenora on April 29 and Thunder Bay on April 30.
At these meetings, there will be discussion about “the geography for the regions and what the regional DMMOs, or Destination Marketing and Management Organizations, will do, what the structure will be,” Smith said.
“We were wondering how we were going to finance them, but with the recent budget announcement of $40 million, we will see some dollars flowing to those organizations starting next year, so we have about a year to get these up and running,” she remarked.
“I am not going to commit to you today that Sunset Country will have its own area,” Smith added. “We want talk to them [stakeholders] about it.
“We think there is a real benefit to the economies of scale, and having larger regions, I know it’s not what you want to hear but just hear me out, the larger regions allow for better marketing, for better product to be developed and for . . . more bang for your buck,” she argued.
“So we want to work with our existing destination marketing organizations, and with the regions that right now do not have anyone representing them, to make sure that we are able to market every region of the province as effectively as possible, and that we can take all of the marketing dollars that are available and make sure they are being used effectively as possible.”
Smith said about 52 percent of accommodations in Ontario already have some form of Destination Marketing Fee (DMF)—some collected by the municipalities, others by Chambers of Commerce or Destination Marketing Organizations, and some by establishments themselves.
“We don’t have a real ability to govern or manage how those funds are being spent, nor do we have any real transparency or accountability around those dollars,” she noted.
“As we move forward with the single sales tax, we are going to have a share of that three percent designated to marketing and we will be able to flow that through our organizations. We see this as a real benefit.
“We know we have to work with our Destination Marketing Organizations that exist to make sure that we continue to develop and build on the great work that they’re already doing and they’ve worked so hard to develop over the years,” Smith said.
Michael Kurts, assistant deputy minister for the Ministry of Tourism, noted in a separate presentation Thursday that the map in the report showing the 11 new regions “are not [study chair Greg Sorbara’s] recommendations as to what the regions should be.”
“It’s a proposal intended to spark discussion and it sparked discussion. It’s got people talking,” Kurts said.
“I know, having worked with Mr. Sorbara on this report, he feels no allegiance to the way the lines on the map are drawn, but he does feel an allegiance to the idea of regions and providing the activity through regions that make sense, that have the resources they need to move the tourism industry forward in any given part of the province,” he added.
“We are going to be going out to seek advice from the industry on what the best set of regions should be, and what these organizations should be doing.
“But I wanted to make it clear . . . that the lines on the map are intended to be discussion starters, not intended to be the end of the discussion,” Kurts stressed.
Another recommendation in the tourism study, which was released back on Feb. 11, is the collection of Destination Marketing Fees (DMFs), which essentially would be an extra tax that would be utilized by the DMMOs to boost tourism marketing in the proposed regions.
But Kurts noted the introduction of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) in the most recent provincial budget has “changed the discussion” on DMFs.
“I won’t bore everybody with the details, but that essentially changes the rules around the Destination Marketing Fee,” he explained. “Recognizing that, the province put in place $40 million on an annual basis to support regional marketing.
“As it said in the budget, these regional marketing dollars will go to these regions once they’re established.
“We don’t have regions that are consistent across the province, so to implement that new fund in the budget, we need to move towards a regional approach by the summer of next year,” Kurts stressed. “So we have a job ahead of us to identify the regions, identify the manner in which we will flow these dollars to these organizations in the regions for local marketing purposes.
“That’s the work we have ahead of us and we intend to be out very soon, talking to the tourist industry across the province to figure out how we move that forward, because we do want to ensure that this is done in a way that involves the industry and takes the industry’s needs and concerns into account.”
Called “Discovering Ontario: A Report on the Future of Tourism,” the study outlines a 10-year plan with four strategies and 20 recommendations meant to see Ontario reach its potential as “one of the world’s preferred places to visit” and “double tourism receipts by 2020.”
As previously reported, one of the recommendations in the $4-million study is that Ontario establish tourism regions “to better co-ordinate tourism marketing and management across the province,” so each region can work towards creating “a unique brand and a stellar experience within a provincial brand,” resulting in one Destination Marketing and Management Organization (DMMO) for each region.
But this would mean altering the current travel regions in the province, reducing them to 11.
Nine of these would be located in southern Ontario, the 10th would be in northeastern Ontario, while the Sunset Country Travel Association would become part of a region known as Superior North—encompassing everything from Sault Ste. Marie to the Manitoba border.
The full report can be found at www.tourismstudy.ca
