ACOA extends tourism marketing funding deal
‘You can have those treasures but people have to know that they’re there’
The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency has extended its agreement to match money raised by a room marketing levy to fund promoting the island as a tourism destination for another three years at a cost of $1.92 million.
The funding, announced at the Fortress of Louisbourg Tuesday by Cape Breton-Canso MP Rodger Cuzner on behalf of Navdeep Bains, the minister responsible for ACOA, will go to support Destination Cape Breton’s 2017-19 strategic plan, Cuzner said. The money comes from the Innovative Communities Fund. ACOA matches the funds raised by the room levy, up to a cap of $640,000 a year.
“You can have those treasures but people have to know that they’re there,” Cuzner said. “It’s incumbent on all of us to make sure that we spread the word, that we become ambassadors for our community, that we help do what we can to grow and mature this great industry.”
According to ACOA’s project information site, the total project cost is listed as $5.535 million and it has received total government funding of $2.617 million.
The two per cent marketing levy has been tagged onto room-nights sold at accommodations in Cape Breton with more than 10 rooms since January 2011.
In 2016, Cape Breton saw a 15 per cent increase in room
nights sold over the previous year. In addition to boosting visitation, the vision is to have tourists stay longer and spend more money while they’re here, Cuzner said.
“We look to leverage the marketing levy with the support from ACOA as well, there’s obviously always going to be some overhead costs as part of that, but that’s kept to a very minimal amount and it’s really all about putting as much as we
can into developing ways to bring more people to Cape Breton Island,” Destination Cape Breton CEO Mary Tulle said.
In directing its marketing efforts, Destination Cape Breton focuses on areas such as key demographic and geographic groups, she said.
From 2012-2016 the number of room nights sold in Cape Breton rose by 22 per cent, compared with 7.7 per cent in Nova Scotia as a whole, Tulle said.
“You can’t point to one specific factor,” Cuzner said, of the growth. “The increased product that we’ve seen, especially in the golf sector, the price of gas dropping, the Trump bump, those are all sort of peripheral factors.”
The marketing levy and the matching funding play a part in that as well, he added.
In the last five years, small ports in Cape Breton such as Baddeck, Louisbourg and Cheticamp have gone through a market readiness program, with Ingonish set as the next to go through the process, Tulle said.
“We have small exploration vessels that are now visiting each of those ports, we have exploration vessels and high-end vessels that bring 70 or 80 individuals that just want to golf,” she said.
They are looking to explore new potential markets such as China, bringing in a consultant who spent five days visiting Cape Breton sites to see how to best reach that market.
Tulle said the also plan to develop an LGBTQ strategy and are looking at ways to extend the season into the winter.
In its first year, the levy raised $520,000, which was matched up to $500,000 by the sinceshuttered Enterprise Cape Breton Corp.
The last three-year agreement with ACOA was valued at $1.905 million.