Victoria can’t afford to rest on its laurels if it wants to maintain its position as a top global destination, according to the man behind a new 10-year master plan for the region’s tourism industry.
Paul Nursey, chief executive of Destination Greater Victoria, said Victoria must continue to build on its success to maintain its place as a “world-leading brand.”
“We’re at a high point where we’ve recovered well and we need to elevate and move forward,” he said in an interview. “If we don’t do anything, we can wake up in 10 to 15 years not being competitive.”
An economic-impact study released last week showed Victoria had surpassed its pre-pandemic tourism numbers in 2023, with 4.9 million visitors spending just over $1.9 billion and supporting 25,000 jobs.
The ambitious roadmap for the industry’s growth over the next 10 years that Nursey is expected to unveil today is an aspirational document that envisions a new conference centre, a string of new hotels and an Inner Harbour knitted together with completed projects like the Belleville Street Terminal, a re-imagined Ship Point, the Maritime Museum and First Nations’ Future of History project on the Inner Harbour, the completed Roundhouse development in Vic West and the Industry, Arts and Innovation District in Victoria.
The 90-page document, which was started before the pandemic, is part wish list and part placeholder for good ideas, pulling together research, business cases and projects. It has five broad goals: enhancing tourism infrastructure, creating new attractions and experiences, emphasizing placemaking, improving connectivity and ensuring the industry remains sustainable and innovative.
Nursey pointed out the $304-million redevelopment of Belleville Street Terminal was discussed for decades before it finally started to take shape this year. “If we don’t have a plan and prioritize a plan, then we won’t actually get to a future vision of where we’re competitive,” he said.
As for funding things like improving the aging causeway in the Inner Harbour, a new conference centre and a waterfront amphitheatre at Ship Point, Nursey said there is always an appetite for good projects that are shovel-ready.
There are projects in the plan that don’t require much funding, however, and those are top of Destination Victoria’s to-do list already.
Nursey said he will be announcing plans to launch a hotel development task force that will work with municipalities to make them more attractive for potential hotel developers and to make it easier to get hotels built.
He said the need is acute, with visitor numbers on track to increase, while at the same time the region has lost 27 per cent of its available hotel rooms over the last 15 years. While there were 6,470 rooms available in 2009 there were 4,695 in 2023.
Nursey said they would like to see 800 to 1,200 more hotel rooms built, as they know that could easily be absorbed by existing demand.
“The strategy there is to replace what’s been lost,” he said, adding they want to make sure there are units in development to address all segments of the visitor economy — from sports teams to leisure and business travellers.
They hope to launch a feasibility study next year for a new conference centre and determine what makes most sense — renovating the existing one, or building a new larger venue.
Nursey notes Destination Greater Victoria’s most recent study of conference business, done in 2020, showed the city could not bid on 80 per cent of conference business in Canada.
“We’ve taken that space essentially to its limits,” he said, adding studies suggest conference business could be doubled or tripled.
“And that’s the best business there is, because it’s four times what a leisure traveller spends.”
Destination Greater Victoria has also been working on a Saanich Peninsula tourism strategy they hope to release soon, and there are designs on establishing a strategy for the Gorge waterway.
“And in the meantime we’ll keep building the business cases on some of these bigger asks, and we’ll work with our partners and we’ll get these things across the finish line,” Nursey said. “Because at the end of the day, Victoria is competing against every other city. Our sector brings in net new money and it builds amenities and it builds quality of life for visitors and residents.”
