By Victoria Carnaghan
Thirty-nine hotels in the Ottawa Gatineau region have begun adding a three per cent leisure marketing fee onto their patrons’ bills in an effort to boost marketing budgets for the local tourism industry. And although summer umbrellas are closing, signalling the end of the patio season, Ottawa’s tourism industry is gearing up for one of their busiest times of year, hoping this new cash injection will generate more vigorous activity than was seen over the previous summer months.
Janteen Van Kregten, communications director of Ottawa Tourism, says some of Ottawa’s busiest months are September and October, also known as the “shoulder season.” These months draw a large number of business-related visits and the city hosts a variety of conventions.
These facts, coupled with a multi-million dollar injection of funds into Ottawa Tourism’s marketing budget from the leisure marketing fee, means a much-needed tourism boom could be around the corner.
In 2004, Ottawa tourist spending supported over 22,000 jobs and created over $150 million in economic activity, according to research firm Decima Research. Yet, Ottawa’s tourism sector has been in a slump for four years, owing to world events which discouraged travel to Canada such as the SARS outbreak in 2002, says Dick Brown from the Ottawa Gatineau Hotel Association (OGHA). Events like September 11 bombings in 2001 also contributed to a worldwide decline in travel, he says.
The number of visits to the Ottawa-Gatineau region this year have been especially low, a recent report released by Decima Research indicates. The Travel and Tourism Forecast, compiled for Ottawa Tourism, predicts that by the end of the year visits to the Ottawa-Gatineau area will have increased only 0.6 per cent since 2004. This shows a noticeable slowing when compared with a four per cent increase between 2003 and 2004.
A desk manager at Albert at Bay hotel, Diane White, met those statistics face-to-face this summer. She says that activity this summer was adequate, but agrees numbers remain down. “It’s picking up but we’re not as busy as other years,” she says.
Brown says the money from the voluntary hotel levy has so far “stemmed the bleeding” of the drop in tourism rates.
The new tax, imposed one year ago last June, has pumped almost $3 million into the marketing budget of Ottawa Tourism.
Brown says this “leisure marketing fee” was introduced at OGHA hotels whose management wished to participate. Its goal is to “promote Ottawa as a tourism destination both nationally and internationally,” he says.
Brown helped design the fee. He says world events and disasters are out of anyone’s control and difficult to plan for, but says funds generated from the fee can at least increase awareness of Ottawa as a tourist destination.
Van Kregten says the money collected from the 39 hotels who add the leisure marketing fee onto patron’s bills is now becoming available and she says the marketing department has begun to put the money to use.
With advertising messages which paint Ottawa as “a dash of London with a touch of Paris,” Van Kregten says marketing efforts will attempt to erase the Ottawa’s sometimes stuffy reputation.
The campaign strategies draw their inspiration from focus groups conducted in large urban centres like New York, Montreal and Toronto. Van Kregten says the tourism industry hopes to see their effects soon. This type of data collection is pricey and was never available before to the bureau, she says.
She says Ottawa Tourism’s long-term expectations are “hopeful yet realistic,” and notes that immediate results are difficult to track because group tours and packages are often arranged three to five years in advance.