Tourism Revelstoke is what’s commonly referred to as a Destination Marketing Organization, or “DMO”. However, over the last few years, there has been an increasing recognition that marketing can’t exist in isolation. In order to market a destination, it’s essential that visitation is also measured and properly managed.
Following several strategic planning sessions in 2022, Tourism Revelstoke rewrote its vision to reflect its broadening role. Our vision is that Revelstoke is a world-class destination while being an authentic and vibrant community. Our mission is to inspire value-aligned visitors to experience Revelstoke and to grow sustainable tourism opportunities that benefit the community.
A new model
Tourism Revelstoke is transitioning to a model in which we allocate more resources into better managing Revelstoke’s tourism economy. We want to ensure that Revelstoke is not only a tourism destination, but a liveable and enjoyable community for residents. We are proud to invite the world to Revelstoke but we need to ensure that our community has the willingness and capacity to host visitors. That means considering Revelstoke’s carrying capacity, resident sentiment and wellness, community contribution and the dispersion of the benefits of the tourism economy. To that end, we will be allocating more resources to collecting robust data, supporting community initiatives, and advocating for policies that benefit our residents.
Increased funding
Tourism Revelstoke’s funding comes from the Municipal and Regional District Tax (“MRDT”), more easily understood as a hotel tax. Every visitor who stays in a hotel in Revelstoke pays a tax to a provincial fund. Visitors who stay in short term vacation rentals also pay a tax, but their contributions go directly into a fund for affordable housing.
On May 1st of 2023, Revelstoke’s MRDT will increase from 2% to 3%, which will align us with most MRDT collecting communities in the province. The City of Revelstoke and Tourism Revelstoke advocated to the province for the increase, an extra 0.8% going towards destination management initiatives and 0.2% mandatorily allocated to a provincial events fund. The MRDT collection area will also be expanded to include accommodators in CSRD Area B.
Tourism Revelstoke will allocate its additional MRDT in alignment with the Destination Management Plan we have been creating over the last few months. Look for the public release of our Destination Management Plan in the coming month and engage with us as we strive to create a bright future for tourism in Revelstoke.
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