Rene Rondeau, executive director of Tourism Red Deer. (Supplied)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

respond, restart, rebuild

Alberta’s tourism industry playing the waiting game

May 25, 2020 | 4:59 PM

It’s Tourism Week in Alberta even though the industry remains essentially shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The industry has, “completely collapsed,” since the pandemic began, according to Linda Southern-Heathcott, chair of the Travel Alberta board of directors.

She spoke during a webinar Monday morning to share highlights from Travel Alberta’s 2020-22 re(Bound) Strategy. The strategy starts with realigning priorities to look at opportunities at home, before broadening the scope as travel restrictions decrease and traveller confidence grows.

The strategy’s first phase, titled Respond, is set for March to May 2020, while the organization plans to Restart from May 2020 to April 2021. Phase 3 — Rebuild — will take place from 2021 to 2022.

“Since the onset, our visitor economy has been hit hard,” she said. “The effects were immediate. But we are a resilient industry and we have a resolve to get through this together.”

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Meantime, Rene Rondeau, Tourism Red Deer’s new Executive Director, says though everyone is in a waiting pattern, it’s important to have a plan.

“Many members have pivoted and found creative ways to do business with curbside takeaway, or virtual visits and other things,” he says.

“People have to be patient. There will be things opening this summer, but those businesses will be getting used to doing things differently.”

Rondeau says the harsh reality is that if businesses – most of them small or what you might call “mom and pop stores” – can’t bring people in, they’re going to face some tough decisions.

A recent Travel Alberta survey found that 33 per cent of tourism-related businesses believe they are at a significant or moderate risk of having to permanently shut their doors.

Two-thirds of those same businesses believe they won’t be able to open at all this summer.

“For Tourism Red Deer, it’s about making sure we focus on local, and helping Red Deerians understand that there are places in their own backyard that they’ll want to revisit and spend some money and time at as things continue to re-open,” adds Rondeau.

“We are communicating with businesses to see what their issues are, both in Red Deer and central Alberta, to see where and how we can support them.”

Travel Alberta is hosting webinars nearly every day this week: Tuesday will feature a talk about how to restart tourism in Alberta, Wednesday centres around funding programs for tourism businesses, and Thursday’s focus will be on Alberta’s economy in a COVID-19 world. Those all begin at 10 a.m.

At 1 p.m. Thursday, they’re hosting the Alberta Tourism Town Hall.

Registration is free for all of these webinars at industry.travelalberta.com.

More information is also at VisitRedDeer.com.