Tourism Fernie 2025 Annual Report
Message from the Chair
Tourism Fernie: Envisioning the Future Growth and Sustainability in our Community
It is often said that change isn ' t easy. But change is also a positive, energizing, and constructive force. We can certainly agree that the recent past has revealed challenges that I believe we must confront in planning the healthy growth of our community.
The Challenges
Canadian municipalities are essentially without capital to fund much other than the most basic services, and the iceberg of deferred maintenance for existing municipal assets is so substantial that an increasing pressure is building for towns like Fernie to explore more innovative partnered and alternative approaches to addressing renewal and upgrading or developing new facilities that are ready for the next chapter.
Despite a widespread recognition of the value of tourism to the province of BC, governmental funding support and options for municipalities to develop new revenue streams are extremely limited in terms of driving sustainable tourism growth.
Regulatory impediments to development within the tourism sector add substantial cost and delay to all projects thereby increasing risk to private sector investment, the result of which is a tepid inflow of capital to grow the tourism industry. These barriers include permit complexity, unresolved land claims, and strict rigidity to agricultural land use within the ALR land inventory.
Growing pressure from tourism has resulted in a tension between residents in tourist towns and visitors being invited come to these towns. The narrative, which is almost certainly true, is that the tourism industry produces revenue to the communities but does not pay for the cost of sustaining the tourist assets whether that is investment in facilities or funding to resource the people and organizations in the community to keep them operating. This leaves a funding gap for the tourism destinations to solve by taxing local communities to try to keep up.
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Photo Credit: Nick Nault
Industries such as mining and forestry are recognized as sunset industries for numerous reasons, most notable the same regulatory constraints previously mentioned, coupled with dynamic market conditions that increase risk to these previously stable job creators.
Climate change can now be clearly listed as a major factor in tourism industry growth as the observable trends of shorter and interrupted winters with less predictable winter temperatures result in shorter revenue windows for winter activities and increasingly longer snowless seasons.
Tourism Footprint in Fernie
In the“ Tourism 2030” report, Destination Canada projected revenue growth in the national tourism sector of 6.1 %, with growth compounding over the 10 years. This was compared to project growth for the balance of the Canadian economy of 4.5 %. Tourism is widely viewed as a growth sector in Canada and globally. In real dollar terms this means $ 160 billion dollars in revenue will be produced annually in Canadian tourism by 2030.
Tourism revenues in Fernie for 2026 is estimated to be $ 180 million. This is calculated as $ 45 million from accommodation charges, and the balance being accounted for by restaurants and bars, retail and entertainment, ski passes and recreation, transportation, and events and attractions.
There are 2,600 households in Fernie with a population of 6,320 persons. Therefore, tourism produces approximately $ 70,000 per household and it is going up each year at a rate well above inflation.
An approximate breakdown of the percentages of contribution to the economy of Fernie is:
• Mining- 45 %
• Tourism and recreation- 25 %
• Retail and Hospitality services – 10 %
• Construction and real estate – 8 %
• Public sector services – 8 %
• Other – 4 %( this includes forestry) Current Actions of Tourism Fernie
Tourism is only one component of our Fernie economy, and as such it competes for funding with other priorities within the community whose objectives have advocates as well.
An initiative which has gained traction recently is the support for an Economic Development office for Fernie. This has been identified in the Official Community Plan, but until recently that role has been under resourced, with only inter-municipal business license revenues for Fernie, Sparwood, and Elkford funding the collaborative Elk Valley Economic Initiative, which relies on project-focused grant funding to advance meaningful work. The creation of a local Economic Development function has now gained the support of the City of Fernie, which together with funding support from Tourism Fernie, will begin a three year roll out of this new office. The office will be operated by the Chamber of Commerce, and the terms of reference are being refined.
Tourism Fernie will continue to pursue growth opportunities within its own mandate primarily within two areas. The first is“ Tourism Marketing” the focus of which is to reach and attract consumers with our menu of tourism offerings. The second is“ Destination Management” which we view as advocating for the development and expansion of the number of tourism assets and the growth of seasonal revenue sources to smooth out revenue cycles for our businesses.
Tourism Fernie has an annual budget of approximately $ 1.8M of which $ 1.4M is derived from its primary source, the 3 % MRDT, a revenue taxation stream legislated by the Province of British Columbia and collected on hotel room charges. Of that amount, approximately $ 700,000 is paid to support promotion of Fernie as a travel destination for domestic and international markets. Another $ 575,000 is allocated for Administration including HR staffing costs and general overhead, leaving approximately
4 Report for 12 month fiscal period of January – December, 2025