10 million B.C. skier visits by 2015
Not exactly a new issue to this board, I know, but this article lays it out pretty well...
Excerpt: "British Columbia's ski resorts have experienced threefold growth since 1980, to 6.2 million skier visits a year, said Jimmie Spencer, president and chief executive officer of Canada West Ski Areas Association, which includes 60 ski areas in the province. (In comparison, Colorado had 11.2 million skier visits in the 2002-3 season.) That number is expected to hit 10 million by 2015, Mr. Spencer said."
An Overcrowded Playground in British Columbia's Future?
By CHRISTOPHER SOLOMON
FOR some time, British Columbia has been considered a backcountry paradise for vacationers who get their thrills atop a pair of skis, in hiking boots or on a mountain bike. But now, with the enthusiastic backing of the local government, a startling growth spurt of new ski areas, resort expansions, lodges and other tourism-related development is taking place, and some people worry the changes will turn British Columbia into an overcrowded playground.
There is no doubt that the pace of change has been breathtaking:
• Revelstoke Mountain Resort is expected to open within two years in southeast British Columbia with long-term plans for 25 ski lifts and a resort village with 16,000 beds.
• Twenty-three Sno-Cat-skiing companies may now guide skiers to backcountry ridgelines, a 50 percent increase since the Liberal Party took office in 2001, according to Land and Water British Columbia, the government corporation charged with promoting development through commercial use of public lands and waters. The number of heli-skiing companies also has increased by nearly one-third, to more than 30.
• In 2003 the government approved the Canoe Mountain resort project southwest of Jasper National Park. The all-season resort, which is expected to cost $84 million, at 1.22 Canadian dollars to the United States dollar, will have a gondola for summer sightseeing and skiing, golf courses and homes. It is expected to open in 2007.
• In October, after nearly 14 years of study and rancor, the government gave environmental approval for the $376 million Jumbo Glacier Resort, which could appear in the Purcell Mountains by the end of 2007. The resort will offer the most summer glacier-skiing on the continent.
Including the Jumbo and Revelstoke projects, Land and Water British Columbia expects to sign six more agreements over the next 12 to 15 months, according to Bill Irwin, director of the all-seasons resort program for the agency, who added that "each one of those projects will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars."
Another $860 million in development is expected over the next five years at existing ski resorts, Mr. Irwin said. That is in addition to the development spurred by the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Premier Gordon Campbell, has asked the tourism industry to double its revenues by 2015. The goal is to reduce the provincial economy's reliance on the unstable crutches of logging and mining. Though tourism brings in nearly $22 million a day and is the province's largest employer, forestry and oil and gas exploration still account for most of the province's gross product.
British Columbia's ski resorts have experienced threefold growth since 1980, to 6.2 million skier visits a year, said Jimmie Spencer, president and chief executive officer of Canada West Ski Areas Association, which includes 60 ski areas in the province. (In comparison, Colorado had 11.2 million skier visits in the 2002-3 season.) That number is expected to hit 10 million by 2015, Mr. Spencer said.
British Columbia's land area is greater than that of California, Washington State and Oregon combined, but since 94 percent of the province is public land, almost every river-rafting entrepreneur, fishing guide and tour operator must gain government approval to operate. The system that the Liberal Party inherited when it took office was widely agreed to be too slow. "We had people who were waiting for anywhere from six months to six years to be processed," said John Willow, director for tourism in Land and Water British Columbia's strategic initiatives division.
Today the buzzword among political officials is "streamlining." Premier Campbell's Liberal Party, more business-friendly than the rival New Democratic party , now is processing 90 percent of applications within 140 days. In September he doubled the annual budget of the government's tourism arm.
"The natural resource is there," said Mary Mahon Jones, chief executive officer of the Council of Tourism Associations of British Columbia. "Our challenge is now to take the resource and develop it to the extent that we can."
Some environmentalists and tourism operators worry that this fevered pursuit of tourist dollars will damage the very scenery, wildlife and solitude that lure vacationers.
The number of new recreation permits issued by the government has increased 127 percent over the last five fiscal years. There are now 743 permits issued to companies to use public lands, according to Mr. Willow of Land and Water British Columbia.
"They've essentially thrown open the floodgates," said Paul Leeson, a director of the BC Wilderness Tourism Association and the owner and manager of Fortress Lake Wilderness Cabins and Purcell Lodge, two wilderness retreats that are usually reached by helicopter. Existing lodges have suffered from the influx, Mr. Leeson said, in large part because the pool of customers who want a vigorous hiking or backcountry skiing vacation is not huge. About three dozen lodges now pepper the backcountry, double the number a decade ago, according to Brad Harrison, vice president of the Backcountry Lodges of British Columbia Association.
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