A tourism action plan defines the who, what, where, when and how of making tourism happen. It provides a framework for businesses, local government and other organizations to analyse tourism resources and concerns, and to encourage development and promotion within your community.

It covers the five key components of tourism:

• Attractions: natural and man-made features within and near your community that are of interest to tourists _ _ lakes, mountains and wilderness, unique shops, historic sites, industries, fairs, conventions, competitions and tours.

• Promotion: marketing tools, such as advertisements, travel shows, magazine articles, brochures, maps, videos, commercial and promotional signs, auto tour guides and tourist information booths.

• Infrastructure: roads, airports, railways, parking areas, sewage dump stations, water and power services, boat launches, and location and distance signs. Community recreation facilities that can be used to host events and sports tournaments, such as ice arenas, curling rinks, baseball diamonds and community halls are also infrastructure elements. If access to your area is poor, and if basic services are lacking or in disrepair, tourists may go elsewhere.

• An endorsement from your band council acknowledging the plan as your community's official tourism development and promotion strategy
• The plan's credentials: what it is, who developed it, under what authority and what it hopes to accomplish
• A description of the process: when and how the plan was prepared, when it will be monitored and reviewed; how it should be used and by whom, and how public input was obtained
• A definition of tourism
• The development policy for your community
• A summary of your present and potential tourism markets, assets, concerns about tourism, goals and objectives, and actions to be taken

• Services: hotels, motels, campgrounds, restaurants, service stations, shops and other retail businesses.
• Hospitality: This key element is the cement that holds the whole tourism package together. Involving everyone in your community, it determines whether tourists enjoy their stay, whether they will come back and whether they will encourage others to visit.

  A committee approach to developing the plan ensures commitment from your community. It also takes advantage of the skills and experiences of community members who own businesses, work in tourism or have training in the industry.

  A Band Council Resolution can formalize the committee by confirming its official name, mandate, number and selection of members and chairperson, procedures for meetings and reporting, frequency of meetings and meeting quorums.

  THE COMMITTEE MEETING

  AGENDA

  TOURISM DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE

  INAUGURAL MEETING

  DATE

  PLACE

  Item

  1. Selection of a chairperson

  2. Selection of a secretary (if not provided by the First Nations council)

  3. Review of the committee's terms of reference

  4. Review of The Development of Tourism in Your Community

  5. Review of background information

  6. Review of the development policy, including the tourism components

  7. Other business

  8. Date and agenda for next meeting

  During meetings, questions may arise that committee members cannot answer. Your chairperson, in consultation with the group, can designate members to collect whatever information is needed and report back to the committee by a specified deadline.

  Meeting discussions and decisions should always be recorded:

  • Your chairperson or an appointed member should record lists and group statements in point form on a flip chart for all to see. This can be done as the meeting proceeds to help keep the group focused on the topic.
  • Your secretary should keep detailed minutes for subsequent distribution to Committee members. The minutes will form a permanent record of what takes place at each meeting.
  • As each step in an activity is accomplished, your secretary should record completion.

  Identify Present Tourism Markets

  Before any decisions can be made, you need reliable information on the present state of tourism in your area. To establish baseline information, your committee could look at the following:

  • Reasons they come. Is it for business, pleasure, for local services, to visit friends and relatives or are they just passing through?
  • Services they look for and whether the services are available.
  • Time of year most people visit.
  • Mode of transportation.
  • Length of stay.
  • Amount of money they spend.
  • Age, sex, education, occupation, income class and place of origin of the tourists who come to your community now.
  • New trends in travel, changes in types of people travelling.

  The action plan should reflect the specifics of your own community, but other communities and regional tourist associations may have information to share.

  Develop Tourism Market Profiles

  The chart (see Appendix A) can be used to develop profiles for each type of tourist that comes to your community at present. As previously stated, there are five types of tourists, defined according to their reason for travel:

  • business;
  • personal business;
  • vacation;
  • visiting friends and relatives; and
  • passing through.

  Fill in the "present Tourism type" row for each Tourism type by answering the questions along the top of the chart. There might be potential to attract tourists from all categories, but the importance of each type of tourist to your local tourism industry will vary.

  By grading present tourism markets in the column, "Present Importance," your committee can best focus on where to concentrate its efforts.

  Each committee member grades each tourist type on a scale of one to 10 in importance, in terms of number, length of stay and expenditures. Ten would be the highest grade. The consensus grade is arrived at by adding up the numbers assigned to each tourist type. The tourist type with the highest grade would be ranked first; the type with the second highest grade would be ranked second, and so on.

  If there are tourism operators in or near your community that are not represented on the committee, talk to them to validate your committee's findings. These tourism operators could include:

  • hotel/motels
  • restaurants
  • parks and campgrounds
  • service stations
  • tourist information booths
  • hunting and fishing operations
  • tours
  • provincial departments of culture, tourism, parks and recreation, and transportation
  • utility departments
  • regional tourist associations
  • retail businesses
  • service clubs
  • sport and cultural events
  • tourist attractions (museums, cultural centres, etc.)

  If you emphasize that the chart is still at draft stage, people will realize that their input is going to be used. This also gives you the opportunity to find out what tourism promotional activities are under way and what are planned.

  At your next committee meeting, change the market profile charts according to what you have learned from these discussions.

  List Tourism Assets

  Tourism assets can be divided into five categories:

  • attractions
  • promotion
  • infrastructure
  • hospitality
  • services.

  For example, a new elementary school is a community asset but it would also be a tourism asset if its architecture reflected First Nations influences or if it could be used for major events or conventions for tourists.

  First Nations have tourism assets which are not necessarily recognized as such. These include:

  • their history and their perspectives of that history;
  • Aboriginal views on nature and the environment;
  • Aboriginal arts, crafts and performing arts;
  • on-reserve wildlife regulatory regimes which may differ from provincial/territorial regimes;
  • reserve and nearby lands, including archaeological and historic sites, lakes, wilderness areas, wildlife habitats, vegetation and geological structures;
  • Native tourism sectoral organizations which could provide valuable central services and co-ordinate the activities of First Nation communities; and
  • unique industries.

  TOURISM ASSETS

  Assets		Rank
  Tourism Attractions Provincial park nearby Wilderness areas nearby with good fishing lakes Annual powwow Annual hockey tournament Community hall Community craft store/workshop Tourism Promotion Linkages with other First Nations Tourism infastructure Good access to primary highway Full sewer and water servicing, excellent-quality water Tourism Hospitality Some friendly merchants Tourism Sevices New outfitter camp Service station Campground near reserve General store Tow truck service		1 2 3 4 5 6 1 1 2 1 2 3 1 5 4

  Once you have listed your assets, rank them in importance. Start with tourism attractions. Have each committee member grade attractions on a scale of one to 10. Then use the grade total for each asset to determine its rank. Once you have completed ranking the attractions, go on to look at infrastructure, hospitality, service and promotion.

  Recognize Tourism Concerns

  Tourism concerns can include:

  • Negative assets: Check your market profiles and list of assets for those items that may have negative aspects. Discuss how they can be improved.
  • Outright liabilities: A noxious pulp mill on your doorstep is definitely a concern. List all such liabilities _ _ even those that seem insurmountable _ _ because someone else may have a partial solution. Even if no solution is found, your discussion will have helped put it into perspective for the community.
  • Undeveloped ideas: List and discuss all ideas, no matter how off-the-wall they are. They may include great proposals that have not been acted upon. If a good suggestion is presented negatively, you then can list it as a concern, which then becomes motivation for action.

  List tourism concerns the same way you listed assets.

  Be explicit. For example, the statement, "Visitors just pass right through town; nobody ever stops here," is too general. It may be true, but it has to be more specific to be of use as a discussion point. Visitors may not be stopping in town because:

  • There are few clean washrooms at local service stations (services).
  • There are no parking spots (infrastructure).
  • Tourists do not know about attractions (promotion).
  • No interesting attractions are visible from the highway (attractions).
  • Some merchants have not recognized the importance of being courteous to tourists (hospitality).

  The more specific you are in categorizing a concern, the easier it will be to find a solution.

  Rank the concerns as you did the assets. At the top of the list put obvious concerns that can be fixed easily, at little cost, and with highly visible results.

  Determine Potential Tourism Markets

  This exercise looks at the possibilities for increasing existing tourism and attracting an entirely new market. Using the Tourism Market Profile answer the questions along the top of the chart for the five categories of "potential new tourist types." Base your analysis on present tourism markets. For example, if existing facilities are at capacity during the summer, it might make sense to focus on winter tourists, such as snowmobilers, hockey tournament participants and spectators.

  TOURISM CONCERNS

  Concerns		Rank
  Tourism Attractions No major tourist attraction in community No museum or cultural centre Tourism Promotion No tourist literature No welcome signs at edge of town Businesses are not members of provincial and regional tourism association No powwow or hockey tournament promotion outside of community No community theme Campers are not aware of all the goods and services available in community Tourism infastructure Several good fishing lakes in the area without adequate access No sewage dumping station for recreational vehicules in or near the community Tourism Hospitality Some merchants and staff are unfriendly Some residents are unfriendly or discourteous to visitors Tourism Sevices Campground near reserve does not provide full service No repair facilities for recreational vehicles and outboard motors in town No recreational equipment rentals in town (canoes, boats, snowmobiles, etc.)		1 2 2 3 6 4 1 5 1 2 1 2 1 2 3

  Rank all anticipated tourist markets in order of importance.

  State Tourism Goals and Objectives

  Tourism goals are clear, concise statements describing the kind of tourism wanted in your community. They must be compatible with the community's development policy and should provide direction for more specific objectives.

  Tourism goals can be stated simply by inserting the phrase "to improve" in front of each of the five key components of tourism:

  • to improve tourism attractions;
  • to improve tourism promotion;
  • to improve tourism infrastructure;
  • to improve tourism hospitality; and
  • to improve tourism services.

  Each of these goals leads to a set of objectives which are simple, concise steps to achieving the relevant goal. They should be measurable and realistic.

  How To Develop Tourism Objectives

  Look at how the needs and wants on your market profile charts relate to the tourism resources of your community. Focus on one tourism goal at a time. For each goal, display your charts on present and potential market profiles, assets and concerns. Then, assign an objective to each concern. For example, tour buses may travel through your community but do not linger. How do you encourage those travellers to stay longer or to come back? The concern is that you have tourism services and attractions but no one knows about them.

  For the goal, "to improve tourism promotion," your committee then develops objectives that promote businesses and services by advertising special tour services in local newspapers, provincial or territorial tourism publications or by mailing information flyers to tour companies.

  The following chart provides a detailed look at the process of developing objectives.

  One well-worded objective may cover more than one concern. However, avoid wording so broad or general that the objective becomes difficult to focus on or fulfil.

  Once all the concerns have been matched with objectives, the objectives can be ranked to highlight the priorities. A priority list of five objectives is recommended to provide direction on what is to be achieved.

  The answers to three questions help focus the relative importance of each objective.

  • What present and potential markets do the objectives relate to? How important are they?
  • How long will it take to accomplish the objective?
  
  

  (a) less than a year; (b) one to three years; or (c) more than three years.

  What will it cost (approximately) to achieve this objective and where will the money come from?

  PROCESS FOR DEVELOPING OBJECTIVES

  1. Display all charts completed to date.

  2. Write the first goal at the top of the Tourism Goals and Objectives flip-chart.

  3. Review your Tourism Market Profiles, Tourism Assets and Tourism Concerns lists related to the goal.

  4. Taking the first concern on the list, ask: What can or should be done about it?

  5. Write an objective related to this concern. Your first thoughts are often the best: once you have something on paper you can add, delete or amend at will. This is a time for creative thinking.

  6. When everyone is satisfied with the objective, move on to the next concern and develop the next objective.

  7. When all concerns relating to your first goal have been dealt with, repeat the process for the other four goals.

  8. Keep a record of all proceedings.

  9. After a break or at a subsequent meeting, carry out a critical review of your objectives. Make changes if you are not happy with what has been produced to this point.

  The top-priority objectives should be feasible, compatible with the development policy, have highly visible results and appeal to your community members.

  An example of a tourism goals and objectives chart is on the next page.

  Develop Action Steps

  Tourism action steps are specific, detailed directives on how to achieve each objective.

  They must be realistic. If a proposed step leads nowhere or needs additional activities to make it work, either alter or abandon it. Otherwise, the individuals responsible for supervising its co-ordination and implementation will have an impossible task.

  Tourism Action Step Work Sheet summarizes all the previous work and the elements needed to turn planning into reality. Take the information from the work sheets and lists already completed, then list action steps in the order in which you expect them to be accomplished.

  If action steps are difficult to develop for a certain objective, that objective might be unrealistic and have to be changed or abandoned.

  TOURISM GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

GOAL:

OBJECTIVE:

CONCERN(S)

JUSTIFICATION:

MARKETS IMPLICATED:

TIME FRAME:

ACTION STEPS BY WHOM WHEN RESULTS

1. Develop a proposal to come up with a community theme including:

- what criteria should be used in deciding upon it;

- who should make the final decision;

- how to get residents interested and involved; and

- how the theme can be portrayed to visitors.

2. Seek assistance for the proposal from the First Nations Council and local businesses (businesses may be willing to provide prizes for the winning theme in a contest).

3. Decide on the theme.

4. Determine how best to portray the theme.

5. Institute other ways to support and promote the theme.

At this point, your committee can assign responsibility and realistic deadlines for the completion of each step. Individuals and local organizations should be encouraged to participate, but the assigned committee member is the supervisor who manages the process and reports on activities. Throughout the process, your committee is the lead player.

Involve Your Band Council and Community

Your draft tourism action plan is now ready for submission to the band council and then to the community. The draft gives both groups the opportunity to review and discuss the plan before the committee seeks input from parties outside the community.

The resulting additions or changes can be incorporated into a second draft and resubmitted to the council.

Community Input

After the band council approves the draft plan in principle, your committee can seek input from entrepreneurs, local tourism associations and government departments outside the community. The band council may have advice on when, where and how to obtain public feedback. There are various ways, including open house meetings and workshops, an open band council meeting, and presentations to local interest groups with follow-up discussion and a questionnaire. The plan can also be mailed to designated individuals with a request for feedback or can be published in the local newspaper with a request for comments or date of a public meeting. Committee members can also hold one-on-one discussions with others in the community.

Those most likely to be affected by the plan should be included at this stage. For example, if it recommends improving highway directional signs, ask the provincial highway department for comments. If key people fail to respond, have committee members visit them to explain the plan and obtain feedback.

Implement the Action Plan

The plan can be implemented only after it has received support from the band council, the community and outside private and public agencies. During this process, regular committee meetings will allow members to:

• report on the status of action steps and develop new or alternative ones if needed;
• undertake tasks to help accomplish objectives; and
• deal with problems as they arise.

If you apply for advice or financial support from outside organizations, attach a copy of the plan. It will lend substance and credibility to your application.

Outside Expertise

There are three major sources of outside expertise: consultants, published material and private tourism associations.

Use consultants only for those tasks you cannot do yourselves. Your committee is certainly in a better position to initiate the project by doing the early legwork of gathering and reviewing available information. Not only is it cheaper, but the knowledge and contacts will remain in your community.

If you do go outside your community for expertise, government tourism consultants should be able to provide sound initial advice.

When hiring consultants, be as explicit as possible in detailing the requirements. Your tourism action plan process is a good information tool for the consultant and saves briefing time.

Books are available on how to select and use consultants; how to start and run tourism businesses; and how to execute business functions, such as preparation of business plans, accounting and marketing. These books contain excellent advice at a fraction of the cost of consultants.

Private hotel and restaurant associations as well as provincial, territorial and regional tourism associations provide services to tourism businesses. Through them you can develop a network of association members who have dealt with problems similar to your own.

Monitor the Results

The procedures for monitoring the success or failure of your plan should be in place before implementation begins. Base these procedures on specific action steps and objectives.

For example, your community stages an annual powwow and you plan to promote it. Monitoring procedures need to be in place well before the event. If your objective is to attract more visitors through direct-mail promotion, newspaper and radio advertising, or a combination of these and other promotional activities, try to gauge the success of these efforts by comparing attendance figures for previous powwows with attendance figures after advertising was introduced.

Such monitoring could come in the form of sampling. Committee members or volunteers could survey a sampling of people attending the powwow with a checklist of questions, such as how they heard about the powwow, whether they have friends or relatives in the community, and where they are staying. The more people questioned, the better the sample. Encourage people to take the time to answer questions by offering such incentives as free tickets, discount coupons, pins or balloons.

Other sampling activities include questionnaires by mail and telephone interviews, but for these, you will need information on who attended and how to reach them.

Monitoring could include a status report once every six months from the committee member responsible for each objective. The report _ _ no more than one or two pages long _ _ could describe:

• the action steps that have been taken;

• the most significant results of these steps;

• the extent to which the objective has been accomplished;

• proposed revisions, if necessary; and

• a personal comment on the validity of the objective.

After the committee reviews all the reports, they can be compiled as one document for presentation to the First Nation Council. It is also a good idea to schedule a detailed annual review to evaluate objectives. The findings of this review can be presented to the First Nation Council for consideration and endorsement.

Your community should be made aware of your committee's successes. Toot your own horn because it's a safe bet no one else will. For instance, an annual tourism night with guest speakers, films and presentations would give your chairperson an opportunity to report on achievements, to discuss what is still to be accomplished and where help is needed.

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