The Town of Bonnyville received a look into sports tourism in the area following a presentation to council.
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The Bonnyville Sports Tourism Strategy was presented by Stephen Slawuta, partner with RC Strategies. It gives a chance to look at the state of sports tourism in the community while presenting findings and goals moving forward.
“Really an opportunity for us to learn about the current state of sports tourism in the community, what the strengths are what the opportunities are, what some of the challenges are,” said Slawuta. “We then took that information and used that to set strategic direction which occurred over a handful of presentations with council and staff.
“Then we developed the draft strategy and reviewed that with the community and that led to where we are now which is the final version of the strategy.”
According to findings from the report, residents in the community place a high value on sport tourism opportunities and support and believe they are a worthwhile endeavour.
“That was a real clear theme of the engagement, just validating the residents they want to be engaged in community events they want to volunteer in community events; they see them as being really important to quality of life,” he said.
The majority of respondents had attended a sporting event in the last two years. Of those surveyed, 93 per cent said they’ve been to a household sports and recreation event over the last two years. While 87 per cent of people surveyed strongly agreed that the town should continue to support local organizations with hosting sports and recreation events.
“Again, validating the importance of sport tourism to the community,” said Slawuta.
The report says that data suggests tournaments bring in 200 to 900 additional adult visitors per day to the C2 Centre.
“We also employed a data tool called Propulso,” Slawuta explained. “Which is using movement data or mobility data to get a sense of what is the incremental impact in terms of pure numbers and visitation for different types of events to the community.”
A typical Pontiacs game is estimated to generate approximately $23,400 in GDP. The Winterland Invitational is estimated to generate $152,900 within the town and $305,200 regionally.
The report finds there are some gaps limiting sports tourism.
“One of the limiting factors here for sport tourism if we look at a SWOT analysis and we look at weaknesses, it would be indoor facility capacity,” he said. “There’s not a lot of available ice time at the arenas.”
The report also gave a breakdown of capacity within the various facilities. The Bonnyville & District Centennial Centre (C2) has almost 90 per cent of its prime ice time booked. While the field house has 70 per cent of its prime-time capacity filled. The pool has no to minimal competition hosting capability according to the report.
“There is quite a bit of outdoor space that is available, there’s some under-capitalized on market segments for sport tourism,” said Slawuta.
The strategy contains eight actions that are organized under three goals. The goals are, improving the sports tourism system, better leveraging existing assets and optimizing infrastructure.
One of the recommended actions speaks to creating a sport and recreation staff function in the town.
“Right now, as councils well aware, there isn’t really this dedicated position within your current staffing model,” he said. “You really do need to have somebody that has the skill set and time and resources to go out and push forward some of these recommendations.”
Improve data collection management. Investigate fee or levy options to generate additional resources to support sports tourism. Increase the focus on smaller and emerging types of events. Work regionally to grow outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism options.
Another goal is to grow existing events.
“Something we heard quite a bit about through our engagement with a lot of the user groups was that they are interested in growing their events and adding on secondary events,” said Slawuta.
The strategy recommends working with sport field and ball user groups to develop a five-year plan to establish priorities for amenity additions and upgrades.
Mayor Elisa Brosseau says the information will help guide council.
“Without having this information it’s like, where do we go, do we capitalize on what we have, do we need somewhere new,” she said. “The GDP that the Pontiacs bring in, the winter invitational, we know it’s a big event that brings to the town but actually getting the metrics down and giving us the numbers really gives us some good goal posts and I think that’s what we need going forward so that it can help us inform our decisions as we’re trying to decide what direction do we actually go in.”
The full report is available to read on the town’s website.
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