October 25

Ten came to this ASK Salt Spring gathering to welcome the new Executive Director of the Southern Gulf Islands Tourism Partnership, Jamie Sterling. After her Territorial Acknowledgement, she told us that she was “excited and delighted” as well as being a bit shocked to know that, after recently adopting a senior rescue cat, she had become a totally cat person. On that fun note, we began learning about the Southern Gulf Islands Tourism Partnership (SGIPT): https://southerngulfislands.com/about-us/). 

A Destination Management Organisation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destination_marketing_organization), SGITP is focused on managing tourism so that it benefits our communities. A registered society, SGITP is funded by a 2% tax charged to all staying at hotels and other accommodations on its member islands, Saturna, Pender, Galliano, Mayne, and Salt Spring, called the Municipal Regional Destination Tax – MRDT:(https://www.destinationbc.ca/content/uploads/2021/11/MRDT-Program-Requirements-September-2021-.pdf).

The total collected from accommodations varies from year-to-year, but is generally a significant amount; With totals not yet available, Jamie estimates that $600,000 was collected from the five islands last year. This funding is divided into two streams: 1) the tax collected from traditional accommodations, like the Harbour House and 2) online sales, like Air B&B and Vacation Rental By Owner (VRBO) sites. While the traditional accommodation funding is relatively stable, online accommodations vary from year to year. In the past, online tax receipts have been generally half of the SGITP funding, but Jamie expects online sales to be as much as 30% lover, yielding an estimated revenue reduction of approximately 12%.

Established in 2019, SGITP is required to renew its ability to charge this tax every five years. To get this needed renewal, sixty percent of the accommodations providers on each of the five islands must approve this tax as well as approval of local government, in this case the Southern Gulf Islands Electoral Area and our LCC. This five-year SGITP approval was granted in August. While nearly all the funding for SGITP comes from the 2% accommodations tax, the Southern Gulf Islands and Salt Spring each also support this organisation with $10,000 a year. 

Membership in this organisation is free. Members of island Chambers of Commerce are automatically members; others involved in the multiple aspects of tourism, including retail and restaurants, are welcomed as members at no cost. Members benefit from SGITP’s regional marketing, largely on its website and a variety of other paid media ads. All decisions are made by the Board elected from its membership with the advice of its member-driven committees. 

For its first five years, a period made far more difficult by COVID, the focus of SGITP was upon regional marketing. Those years were spent developing unique marketing initiatives to spotlight each of the five member islands. With its renewal, a major shift in funding is expected. While continuing to market island visitor opportunities, funding for affordable housing initiatives will also be available. Visitor marketing activities will use the tax revenues from traditional accommodations; affordable housing initiatives will come from the tax on online sales, estimated to be as much as $300,000 a year.   

Destination Management

A key principle of destination management is the encouragement of a visitor experience that aligns well with the values of each community. For our island communities, this experience would not be large tourist buses dumping visitors into our villages. Instead, SGITP would encourage, for example, visitors who leave their cars at home or want to experience the culinary, farming, artistic, and outdoor recreation offerings of our small rural island communities. This could include marketing tasting tours, artistic tutorials, and farm stay holidays to name a few of the many possibilities. 

While this work is just beginning, SGITP has established a good working relationship with all of the islands’ Chambers of Commerce as well as other organizations like our Arts Council which is partnering to offer their recently created events calendar (https://saltspringarts.com/events/). 

A key principle of the SGITP destination strategy is marketing only when the member islands need visitors to support their economy – October to April. So, How does SGITP market our rainy and often less than vibrant island communities in the off season? Jamie replied that, while not that easy, there has been some success marketing a “Come and Do Nothing” option to our largely urban off-season visitors. While a bit tongue in cheek, the message of a slower, relaxed cozy cabin getaway appears to be resonating with visitors needing respite and relaxation. 

Never promoting in the summer, May to September SGITP activities are limited and consist of reminding visitors to be good, thoughtful guests. When a participant asked about the possibility of promoting what he saw as a quite wonderful summer rowing event, Jamie agreed that it likely fit most SGITP priorities – except that is in the summer. Jamie offered to followup to discuss possibilities with this participant soon. 

Affordable Housing

A participant asked why such a large portion of the revenue of SGITP has now been designated to affordable housing. It seemed to him to be a bit of a mismatch to ask accommodation providers to tax their visitors to pay for the housing our government should be funding. We learned that in 2018 the province designated affordable housing as an appropriate expenditure for the accommodations tax collected (https://rdn-pub.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=16705). Jamie told us that the reasoning behind this is twofold: 

1. The popularity of accommodating visitors rather than residential rentals, illustrated by the widespread use of Air B&B and VRBO short term rental sites, has had a negative impact upon the availability of local rental options. The ability to use online accommodation tax revenue is intended to help counterbalance this unfortunate trend.
2. Accommodation providers struggle to house their workers. In a perfect world, these funds could be used to create housing for the accommodations, retail, and restaurant workers who fuel our economy.   

Already, SGITP has made major contributions to address our housing crisis. They have begun offering $100,000 to fund a coordinator for the new CRD Rural Housing Program https://www.crd.bc.ca/about/news/article/2024/07/22/crd-is-developing-a-rural-housing-program-pilot-project). An important initiative, this pilot program hopes to receive CRD funding at its budget meeting this week, Wednesday, October 30: (https://www.crd.bc.ca/docs/default-source/crd-document-library/committeedocuments/crdcommitteeofthewhole/20241030/2024-10-30agendapkgcowpart1.pdf?sfvrsn=b5e64fcf_3). If funded, this program will address the challenges our Southern Gulf Islands and Salt Spring communities face creating affordable housing options, especially when competing with urban communities. 

If funded, the CRD Rural Housing Program will begin slowly but has already identified the possibility of increasing the already available forgivable provincial loan of up to $40,000 to build/renovate affordable rental suites (https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/housing-tenancy/secondary-suites). 

This CRD Rural Housing Program is also considering helping affordable housing projects with pdf, predevelopment funding, including the expensive surveys, studies, site preparation, and designs needed to qualify for construction grants. An active partner of the CRD Rural Housing Program, it is expected that SGITP will continue to support their important work. 

Additionally, the SGITP has given $50,000 a year for the past few years to support Housing Now (https://www.sgicommunityresources.ca/housing-now-home/), begun in the Southern Gulf Islands but becoming an important HomeSharing program for Salt Spring. (The Local Community Commission has also allocated funding from its Economic Sustainability service for Housing Now options designed specifically to meet Salt Spring’s needs.) 

So, what is the SGITP going to do with the rest of its funds allocated to affordable housing projects? Jamie encouraged us to submit great ideas for consideration. She told us that, while they could offer funding, they have no plans to build or manage such projects at this time. A great opportunity for local nonprofits and government, the process to apply has not yet been defined. Would Salt Spring be better to shower SGITP with a plethora of great ideas? Or, would it be better to develop a process – maybe through the LCC? – to select a few of the most promising projects and advocate together to get them funded? Your thoughts, Salt Spring? 

On that interesting note, we bid a grateful farewell to Jamie, intrigued by the exciting possibilities of her new role, glad to have had time to get to know her, and appreciative of her enthusiasm for our ideas. (Thanks, Jamie!) (NOTE: Jamie will also present at the November 14 LCC meeting, beginning at 5:00 in the SIMS Boardroom.) 

After her time with us, Jamie was interviewed by Damian Inwood, President of our local radio station, CHiR.fm, testing live now at 107.9! Interested in listening to her interview, as well as those of many other ASK Salt Spring guests? Simply go to ASK Salt Spring Answered (https://chir.fm/answered).