After making a presentation to North Battleford city councillors Monday, Battlefords Tourism Executive Director Ryan Bater visited Battleford Town Hall where he highlighted the direction taken since the board of directors introduced a new funding model and began a new strategic plan.
When the new model was introduced, Battlefords Tourism had existed since 1995 and the role was primarily tourism marketing, Bater said. That has now shifted to tourism marketing and a strong effort on event attraction and business opportunity marketing.
Included in the effort has been the launching of a new website, scrolling news screens in the lobbies of the Battlefords Hotel Association members and the launching of The Battlefords App.
Behind the shift was the premise that tourism messaging has to be closely in line with promoting the rest of the community, said Bater.
“How many times have you been on holidays somewhere and, depending on how your experience was, you either did or did not think about living there or working there,” he asked.
The new direction included new funding agreement with elevated funding from Town of Battleford, the City of North Battleford and the Battlefords Hotel Association.
“That last partner is a significant one, because it's the first time the private sector has invested significantly in promoting the community,” said Bater.
The six hotels involved, Gold Eagle Lodge, Tropical Inn, Super Eight, Best Canadian Motor Inns and the Travelodge in North Battleford and Jackfish Lodge in Battlefords Provincial Park, are a proactive group, he said.
“The one per cent levy goes into a collective pool and those six hotels fund our organization and they invest directly in the attraction and enhancement of events,” he said.
“A single major event can do more for the local economy than an entire month of leisure travellers,” said Bater.
Battlefords Tourism’s role within the new mandate is to promote and enhance the experience through tourism investment.
“The key word here is experiences,” said Bater. “In the past we've focused on places and facilities, now the focus is on what there is to do, the experience, the activities.”
Another goal is to change internal and external perceptions, he told town councillors.
“You all know our citizens and residents are our best ambassadors,” he said. “We have to make sure what our own people are saying about us is something positive.”
To address the internal perception, he said the board identified as a priority the development of an effective branding strategy.
“This is the most important thing we've done since two years ago,” he said.
“This isn't about a new logo, some catchy tag line, this is about having a consistent and clear message to all people who visit here and live here about the Battlefords community.”
Unlike places like Saskatoon or Regina, said Bater, “we have multiple municipalities, two significant urban municipalities, each with their own identity.”
The challenge was to develop messaging that would be consistent for both those municipalities and for the larger area, he said, because they include the lake communities as part of their promotion area.
The goal was to develop a message that’s honest and “true to ourselves and who we are, and one we can actually follow.”
He said, “If you make outrageous claims and somebody comes here and we fall short of those claims, that’s going to be a negative experience.”
The new message needed to be something that could be incorporated throughout the community so developing the terms of reference for the project was a significant undertaking, said Bater.
“It took several months,” he said, “and we eventually contracted MGM Communication of Saskatoon to assist with the process.”
Working with input from Battlefords Tourism’s branding committee and their own site visits, MGM came up with some recommendations that included a view from outside the community.
MGM told the committee their recommendations were “not for you,” but “about you.”
“It's for people outside of the community,” said Bater, “because those of us who live here, we have a feeling about our community, but it can be tainted because we are not getting that outside perspective.”
The committee took those recommendations last summer, hashed out various options, meeting at the new visitor centre in the river valley, and came up with a unanimous message.
“Since October we have been incorporating the new brand messaging into everything we do, a significant undertaking, he said. “On March 30 we're launching it.”
Bater also presented a financial picture to Battleford town councillors.
That picture included what Bater called reserves of an “uncomfortable” level. He noted those reserves were not built up through the funding agreement, but rather through being understaffed. With two employees in place now, those reserves will not look as “uncomfortable” when it’s time to renew the funding agreement, he explained.
