How to attract more tourism to Ontario and, well, possibly the Parry Sound-Muskoka area? How about a vacation village?
In the endless search for greater attractions to bring more tourism dollars to Ontario, the Province is setting its sights on ‘vacation villages.’ It issued a tender in February looking for bids. Its aim? It wants a feasibility study to determine the viability, impact and economic spin-off such a resort could have, right here in Ontario. Bidders were also asked to identify five possible locations and a way of marketing the idea to private investors.
What is a vacation village you may ask? According to Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport spokesperson Danelle Balfourd, a vacation village is “a year-round, family-friendly leisure destination offering short holiday accommodation and a wide variety of recreational and leisure activities. While easily accessible by car, it is a car-free resort situated in a natural environment on a site of plus or minus 400 acres.”
The concept is modeled after similar style village resorts in Europe. Sounds Idillyc? Not so fast said Parry Sound-Muskoka MPP Norm Miller.
I worry about the government trying to pick where a vacation village should go. So far this government hasn’t been able to get anything right. I would also argue, especially in our area, we have vacation villages. It would make sense to invest in them. I mean Huntsville I would call a vacation village in many regards and also we have around the province places like Collingwood where Intrawest has created a kind of village atmosphere or Niagara where there’s private companies creating places like Great Wolf Lodge, which sounds a bit like what they’re talking about. MPP Norm Miller
Miller said Ontario could be marketing itself a lot better too, as well as supporting industry to improve the products they offer.
Who hasn’t seen a Newfoundland ad on TV? And don’t they make you want to go there? Miller
Miller, who was in the business himself as the owner of Patterson-Kay Lodge, as it was then called, recalled an initiative for tourism operators when his father Frank Miller was in government.
“At that point interest rates were really high and it was a struggle for businesses to be able to reinvest so the Davis government, and the government my father was part of, came up with this program… they gave you five per cent off of whatever you borrowed at the bank and they stood behind the loans. That resulted in huge investment all around Ontario improving the tourism product.”
Unfortunately, he wasn’t one of the beneficiaries, he quipped. “Unfortunately because my father was in government I was excluded from being able to participate so it seemed like every other business, except the one I was running, took advantage of that and you really saw it in terms of quality of accommodations, etc.”
Miller said the provincial government should instead look into ways of investing in existing tourism assets.
According to Balfourd, tourism contributes $28 billion to Ontario’s economy, supporting 350,000 jobs.
“Our government is always looking for ways to grow this important sector,” she said. “We have a vibrant and diverse market that caters to over 142 million tourists each year. Recent and forecast growth in the number of international tourists, the close proximity to a large US consumer base, and a growing domestic market make Ontario a highly attractive location for the development of world-leading tourism products and experiences, such as a vacation village.”
My Daughter recently visited Jay Peak Vermont which is a ski destination more remote than Muskoka. When conditions were not right to ski, they enjoyed the amazing indoor water experience with water slides and a wave pool like at Disney World or the West Edmonton Mall. At the risk of sounding positive, I think it is an idea worth considering for Muskoka where shoulder season tourism is so difficult to attract, and as global warming makes winter conditions less and less predictable. Of course the financing and management must be done properly but we should not throw out the idea. Perhaps this is something that Skyline Developments should incorporate into their plans for the new Deerhurst Village.
A VACATION VILLAGE – hmmm – heard that tune from Deerhurst – this is from their website:
“Blutrich’s vision for Deerhurst includes a new Village Centre with a main street that slopes downward toward Sunset Bay. You will be able to see the resort’s new kayak and canoe dock, and its two kilometres of shoreline – unique to cottage country, where publicly accessible waterfront views are a rarity. Designed as an inviting gathering place, the Village Centre’s cobblestone boulevard will be lined with locally owned and operated businesses that create a dynamic atmosphere.
Think people bustling in and out of coffee shops, restaurants with patios, and bars with live music and dancing. Imagine shoppers wandering through the Farmers’ Market for seasonal produce. Envision strolling minstrels and acrobats performing around a central fountain. Talk about photo ops! The village will even feature a Grand Hotel with an anti-aging spa and a skating rink with views of the golf course next door, lakes, granite outcroppings, and majestic pines.
It’s all part of Skyline’s overall vision to pay tribute to the past while creating an exciting future through the rejuvenation of historic properties. Blutrich refers to it as “polishing Ontario’s diamonds”.
For information on what it may look like, check this out: http://www.deerhurstresort.com//files/1730/skylife-master-plan.pdf
I wonder if Deerhurst put in a bid in February??
Compatible or Competition for our wonderful Downtown Huntsville??
I cannot disagree with any of Mr. Tapley’s well-expressed comments. To them I would add: What is the single most expensive portion of holiday expenditure (excluding airfare, as average Canadians are stay-cationers with our depressed dollar)? Accommodation, of course. We need more youth hostels and elder hostels to capture the non-family travellers. If they succeed so well in Europe, why not here at home? It would certainly allow the two groups with the most disposable income to spend their money on meals, theatre, concerts, souvenirs, etc.
Well here we go. Our government, which as Norm Miller points out has difficulty “doing anything right”, is going to use our tax dollars to create competition for existing operators. Remember Minaki Lodge, way up north? Where is it now? It cost us millions, tens of millions and now? It is a closed, semi burned out shell.
If the government wanted, actually really wanted to “improve” tourism in Ontario they should look at three things.
ONE: Enter into some form of loan subsidy, like what MPP Miller mentions, or perhaps something really simple, like just let the tourism business use the 13% HST it collected for “capital improvements” each year. All that would be necessary would be for the business to prove that the money collected as HST was indeed used for capital improvements within a year of being collected.
TWO: With the climate changing around us we still remain fixed, like a dinosaur, with the exact same holiday schedule each year. By a simple (well it is government here so maybe not so simple) change of school schedule we could save some small amount of education costs while substantially increasing the tourism year. Families with children take holidays only when school is “out”.
So, the weather is nice, warmer now than years past, so make the summer 12 weeks instead of 10, add a week at each end. Also, forget March Break entirely. Winter has left by this time now so all this does is clog up the airports with people trying to go south. Instead, make every weekend in the last half of Jan and all of Feb a long weekend. People will not go to Cuba for a long weekend. They will go to something nearer home. This will boost all winter tourism greatly, very little cost for both. Teachers salaries remain unchanged, busing costs and school utilities go down a little and to accomplish all this no existing holidays need to change. Just add about 12 to 15 minutes to each school day and put all the teachers PD days at either end of the year, not in the middle. Simple eh?
THREE: Why does the government not take a look at the newest and biggest tourist resort of all… that’s right Air b&b!! These internet folks and others like them are taking the country to the cleaners. They don’t collect taxes like HST, they operate in direct and illegal contravention of existing zoning by-laws and in many cases the renting owners most likely never even report the income so the government is losing out all round! This system does not reward the conventional business operator, stuck in place with a lot of fixed assets that can’t be move, flipped or otherwise quickly adapted to the internet.
If the government has not stomach to do something about this to help maintain a level playing field, well maybe they could then at least allow existing tourist business to operate the same way. Ignore zoning, fail to collect HST, only report some income if they fell like it, ignore safety rules and insurance requirements and all the rest of the “advantages” that the internet “virtual resort” seems to have in their favor. This would be the very least government could do.
Spending a ton of money to create more competition, such as these vacation villages is simply going to be a very expensive and inefficient way of driving the last nails into the coffin of existing tourism business.
I believe in the time Norm Miller is referring to Governments had more common sense, that time seems to have passed us by.