Destination Osoyoos heading home as province gets out of local tourism

By ROY WOOD

It’s back to the future for tourism in Osoyoos as the province is poised to return responsibility for visitor services to the town along with the iconic building at the corner of Highways 3 and 97.

The Osoyoos proposal is part of a larger, province-wide change in strategy by Destination BC to get out of local tourism marketing and move it back into communities.

Destination Osoyoos (DO) executive director Kelly Glazer pitched town council last week on her proposal to move the town’s economic development and tourism marketing organization from downtown to the visitor centre.

In her presentation, Glazer said: “DO has been presented with the opportunity to relocate operations currently used as the BC Visitor Centre. … The location would no longer be a provincial visitor centre and would become a community visitor centre … eligible for provincial visitor network funding.”

DO currently pays about $25,000 a year in rent for its downtown location plus some incidental costs. Glazer said that under the proposed agreement DO would pay the province $30,000 a year in rent for five years starting in 2018.

Glazer said her organization would likely be able to tap into about $50,000 a year from a provincial funding program.

Mayor Sue McKortoff said in an interview Tuesday she sees no reason why the town won’t accede to the request. “But we do have to go through the procedure correctly,” she said.

The mayor said she sees no downside in DO making the move. “It’s where DO was before in moved down here. … (And) it certainly makes sense to keep that building. If they are going to close it down, we don’t want somebody else taking it over,” she said.

According to DO’s past board chair Don Brogan his organization was the first to occupy the building starting in about 2007. “The town became a resort municipality and … the province wanted to build a gateway visitor centre for the province in Osoyoos.”

DO signed a five-year contract to run the centre. But at the end of it, in 2012, Destination BC did not renew the contract. “They went with another contractor,” Brogan said in an interview Tuesday. That’s when DO moved downtown.

Brogan said that after losing the contract, he went to Victoria for a “debriefing. … (They) said we didn’t get renewed because we were too Osoyoos-centric and this was a BC centre, not an Osoyoos centre.”

Five years later the province wants to do an about face and return tourism marketing to the community.

Recently, Brogan said, “We’ve been let know by the grape vine that they’d be interested in us getting the contract back to manage it. It’s a great location and it’s where we should have been in the first place.”

Destination BC media liaison Clare Mason said in an interview Monday: “We have a new visitors services strategy over the past few years. We are looking who are best positioned to provide visitor services where and when people need them.

“Our intent is to make sure visitor services are delivered where people need them and by the people who are best able to deliver those services … the folks in the community.”

Mason said similar switches from provincial o local tourism services are taking place in Merritt and Golden.