Golden BC’s Destination Management Project (DMP)
In the heart of the Canadian Rockies lies Golden, British Columbia—a town renowned for its stunning natural beauty and outdoor recreational opportunities. Recently, Golden has embarked on an ambitious initiative known as the Destination Management Project (DMP), aimed at enhancing its tourism offerings while preserving its pristine environment and community support for tourism. The DMP is a principled action-focussed project that focuses on sustainable tourism practices, ensuring that the influx of visitors benefits the community while supporting the ecological integrity of the area.
Project Summary: Phases and Deliverables
At a recent Tourism Golden AGM we presented a summary of the project to date with reference to the following phases and deliverables:
- Creating an Advisory Group
- Identifying destination management issues and principles
- Selecting five to six issues to address through projects
- Solution learning sessions
- Project development
- Implementation
Project Development Phase
The project is now moving into the Project Development phase after having completed the first 4 phases. Getting to this point included a comprehensive review of local resident surveys, working with the Advisory Group and local tourism stakeholders to identify 10 destination management issues, developing a list of 32 possible local and leading projects to address the issues, and narrowing the list of local and leading projects down to 5.
Possible Place-based Projects to Pursue
These projects include:
- Housing our tourism workforce
- Visitor behaviour campaigns
- Recreation site protection and enhancement
- Living wage, community support services and tourism
- Tourism business incubator
Next Steps
After learning about some successful approaches both in Golden and around BC for each of these project areas, we are now developing working groups to help develop and implement local place-based projects. We are excited to move into the project action phase and hope you will stay tuned as the projects come to fruition over the coming year.
Contact
If you are interested in learning more about the Tourism Golden Destination Management Project or our work on destination management and planning please reach out to: info[AT]whistlercentre.ca