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Mayoral candidates will involve hotels in RMI allocation

Two candidates want a hotel tax advisory board; incumbent welcomes consultation

October 27, 2011

Three of Whistler's mayoral candidates welcome an increased role for the hotel industry in deciding how to allocate revenue from the Resort Municipality Initiative (RMI) program.

Candidates Ralph Forsyth, Ken Melamed and Nancy Wilhelm-Morden met with the Hotel Association of Whistler last week, an organization that represents hotel properties such as the Pan Pacific and the Four Seasons, and all committed to giving the hotels more of a say in how funds gathered through RMI are divvied out.

Jim Douglas, the chair of the Hotel Association and general manager of Whistler's Pan Pacific hotel properties, said that hotels have not been involved in allocating RMI money in the past, despite the fact the program's revenues come from being charged on hotel nights.

"It's not necessarily to the distribution specifically of RMI, it is specifically the coordinator efforts of economic development," he said. "We believe members of the hotel association have some expertise and resources to bring to bear, and it's not just RMI money, it's economic development as a whole.

"The hotel association does not want to have an approval process, does not want to control anything, we just want to be around the table and participate."

Incumbent Mayor Ken Melamed said the plan is to follow a negotiated agreement reached recently by Tourism Whistler and the Resort Municipality of Whistler, as well as a council-adopted policy on consultation that sets up a structured process for the hotels to provide their input when the RMOW applies to the province for RMI money.

"We have agreed to consult on the development of the submission to the province and I am personally committed to ongoing evaluation of the program," he said. "The Whistler philosophy is to live in the question, 'how can we do this better?'"

Melamed was also asked alongside the other candidates what he would do as mayor to boost occupancy in Whistler. Pique reported two weeks ago that hotels are seeing their lowest occupancies in the past four years, down to 64.8 per cent from 73.1 per cent in the Olympic year and down from 72.4 per cent in 2009, the recession year.

Melamed said that it is important for resort operators to take responsibility in their "core areas of competency." Tourism Whistler, he said, has the primary responsibility for putting "heads in beds."

"The role of the RMOW in the partnership is to provide support where and when needed consistent with the community defined goals and objectives," he said.

"This year we have increased TW's marketing budget by $1 million with a signed agreement between Tourism Whistler (with strong representation from the Hotel Association of Whistler) and RMOW; injected $2.9 million into Festivals, Events and Animation (FE&A) and completed an analysis of Post Secondary Education opportunities."

The other candidates have similar, if competing ideas, on how to involve the hotels in deciding how RMI money gets spent, and how to boost resort occupancy.

Wilhelm-Morden, a former longtime councillor and chair of a hotel tax advisory group that existed at the municipality in 2006, said she wants to see that group or a similar group brought back and have the RMOW take advice from its members on how to handle the cash.

"We had two or three meetings and that was the end of that," she said of the former hotel tax advisory group. "I would like to see that group or a similar group resurrected and I would like to take some advice and get some input from the accommodation sector on the use of RMI funds."

As for how she would boost occupancy, she said that as mayor she would focus on decreasing the cost of doing business in Whistler.

"We need to pay attention to property taxation levels here, so that the cost of conducting business in Whistler is not continuing to escalate," she said.

"The second thing is we will support our partners, Tourism Whistler, Whistler Blackcomb, the Chamber and the accommodation sector in doing the jobs they need to do to attract visitors here.

"The third thing is I think that there are some economic diversifications available to us, specifically through education and the development of a cultural plan and following through with the cultural tourism strategy."

Forsyth, meanwhile, said the municipality should not be in the tourism or tourism-marketing business, that it's Tourism Whistler's job to market the resort. Nor does he think it should be in the events business.

As such, he wants to set up an arm's length group, similar to VANOC, with representation from groups such as the Hotel Association and Whistler Blackcomb, which would be responsible for allocating a certain percentage of RMI funds.

"VANOC was responsible for putting on the Olympic Games, so I think that's the model you want to move forward with," Forsyth said. "The province said, here's your money, go ahead and produce the Olympic Games.

"I think rather than us taking the province's money, we take the money and then we have a board... then that board would be responsible for the allocation, a set percentage of RMI funds.

"It would be a very small team so it doesn't create another layer of bureaucracy, it just gets it out of the 'Hall' so we focus on core services."