4VI: Vancouver Island’s Bold Experiment in Sustainable Tourism

welcome to the future of Tourism podcast I'm David peacock stop owning your own contents young leaders are stepping up bring everyone to the table and imagine they're wild anew [Music] there are examples around the world of successful Progressive and inclusive experiments that have significantly changed what it is we do as destination organizations all of them are big wild and audacious ideas all of them had to break the status quo and open up the opportunity for real engagement with their communities and citizens now think about this a tourism organization that has redefined itself as a social Enterprise a social Enterprise with a mandate to serve over 800 000 residents a co-creative entity committed to ensuring tourism is a resilient Force for good for the island and its people an organization built on the vision of an enduring vibrant and sustainable visitor economy the organization is for Vi or for Vancouver Island and The Man Behind the team that is for a VI is Anthony Evert oh yeah one more thing it's working good Morning Anthony Everett how are you where are you what's it like good morning David pleasure to be here um I am in Nanaimo British Columbia which is Cinema territory which is in the traditional territories of the new China and peoples and um funny enough we've just had a bit of a snow issue the last few days which we don't get on very temperate Vancouver Island and so I'm looking outside my window here and there is actually some snow on the ground which is Ruffles a lot of people's feathers around that Kickback one if you can believe it but anyway it's beautiful so as I understand it you've had a sort of a winter of weird weather we were there for impact in January and it was pretty unseasonably cold at one point yeah I mean I think when you were hearing impact yeah it's been up and down at Christmas we had some snow and then but you know this is climate change and you really do see these fluctuations and um uh you know I spent some I grew up in Vancouver and I spent some time in Northern British Columbia and when I first got there in the mid-2000s there were some cold Winters and then it all changed and now they're you know they're we're all going through this and it's uh it's interesting what it brings every year seems to be different that's for sure it is fascinating here in Ontario Paris Ontario it's the river freeze cycle the river you know used to freeze solid stay that way for two months and now it's every two to three weeks it's a completely different it's it makes for a very interesting biology and and and and spring runoff situations yeah all right so here we go 4vi it's a huge concept you and I have been around the world I've heard you speak about it can you frame it for us what is 4bi we're speaking to our destination partners and sure via it's pretty cool it's pretty unique but it needs some splaining yeah sure so so I mean there's a couple ways to approach it I'll approach it first by the um the business form which is in Canada at least and your your listeners will be from other parts of the world and what I've discovered with this idea of a social Enterprise is in Canada it's still relatively new form of of work um and all it is is you have a product or a service that you sell um and that you position in a Marketplace but you invest all the revenues and all the proceeds go into a social purpose and that's really what a social Enterprise is um a lot of people will equate it to social responsibility but it's not it's not it's more than that it's taking your products and investing what you make into a social purpose so this is a New Concept in Canada relatively um and it's much more sophisticated in the United Kingdom for example uh because we've done this I've been lucky enough to be in touch with a number of social Enterprises in the UK and they're even monitored by a part of government to make sure that they're living up to their social purpose obligations um and then the other approach is um from a tourism systems perspective right like where we're building new impact and therein kind of lies our story um if you we're not even a year old yet so in April April beginning of April of 23 will have been a year old and when we launched this um and you know the work about nine months preceding when we launched in April of last year uh I didn't know what a social Enterprise was and we discovered this through talking to a lot of people he did some work online and we we did a lot of the heavy lifting ourselves but what we Learned was it was the perfect form of business for where we are and the problem we saw ahead of us and it serves this need that we feel really deeply that tourism needs to be a force for good it's not always a Force for good and what can we do to take resources and bring them to bear on social impacts that tourism is having on Vancouver Island so um you know as I've told this story time and time again and you've heard me and I think we're in Tel Aviv together at a European summative destinations and in that moment I mean there was a there's been a lot of Fascination on the business form within the tourism system but for me what is most important is that we are 100 laser focused on making a difference to the people that live on Vancouver Island so it's more than just the form of business or the Forum within tourism it it's just been really interesting to see how the industry by and large has responded mostly positive but there has been some um concern or destructive elements that have come to us about the form of business and to me that's not what's important what's important we've chose a form of business because of the needs of our own business this was it was a simple business meeting let's talk about that yeah because the simple business need is really useful because it's not like Anthony Everett for Vi was conjured out of nothing you had a traditional um sort of Roland function towards a problem you a 4bi in its previous iteration was essentially a regional tourism office right yeah exactly I mean when I've talked to you many times David you use the term RTO so that's used other places um in in British Columbia context it's called it was called a term I never used and I'm not comfortable with but I'll use it here it's called an rdmo which is a regional destination management or marketing organization um but at the end of the day for us um as an organization tourism Vancouver Island has been has existed as an organization for 60 years okay so for 60 years we were trying to attract attention to people to travel to Vancouver that was our gig and um you know we did it through marketing and we would have engaged in some few other things but really it was about marketing and then a number of years ago and so I can remember the moment it was I was hired a CEO in January 2018 and by 2019 I said to my board of directors I said who are made up of Tourism businesses on background I said we're turning into Blockbuster Video so and to me what that says is that we aren't moving you know Blockbuster isn't with us for a reason and I I was really concerned as an organization we weren't going to stand the test of time as a business because we were so focused on wanting to be something we were no longer receiving funds from government to to deliver so it it took us on a Direction Where We started to hire people and we started to take on contracts that were helping serve communities on Vancouver Island so a lot of them were marketing contracts and things like that and that and that we started to explore this idea but it was really to build our business and quite honestly to remain sustainable and to be here right it was it was to not be Blockbuster video and then the pandemic came and it really that those two moments were the moments that really said we need to be different we can be different and people should demand of us to have more of a social lens on what we're doing meanwhile and then this part of it because it's kind of complicated tourism wherever it is in the world comes to us through a system so destinations are represented through community Through regions through Province through countries and in Canada that system exists what we're really trying to do here as a social Enterprise is stand kind of serve the serve that system adjacent so we want to be seen as serving our communities and the people who live here through our social purpose or sorry our social Enterprise which we take contracts we deliver contracts and we make fees and those fees will be in reinvested in Social impacts of Tourism and um and how we see we do that best is adjacent to the traditional system and therein lies you know some people struggle with the idea that we're doing but we feel that the success of what we're now delivering only one year into this really shows that this is a model that we can use now my caution is I don't know if a social Enterprise is the model for everyone out there but it certainly works for us but I do believe that everyone can pay attention to of a social responsibility of what we're you know what we do so when you think about for 60 years our organization was really focused on how many people were traveling to Vancouver Island and how much room Revenue had created and all those things and all that continues but we're going to focus on how do we make sure Trail systems are healthy here how do we make sure Trails have composting toilets you know on and on those are the things that we're going to focus on and just to be clear those are things that you know albiet they had a place in our mind pre-pandemic and and I think of um uh Pennsylvania a Raystown Lake and and the DMO there who said you know in the pandemic oh my God the investment we made in Trails came back tenfold during the pandemic we need to do more of it just reinforce good behavior the other thing the pandemic reinforces this destinations cannot be locally irrelevant and succeed survivors certainly not be sustainable or regenerative so you're you're in this moment um you also had a bunch of funding polls which made it an easier decision to say boy we better do something different here um it's a hard decision it's a decision I believe that a lot of our peers are on the Crux of making which is how do I go to my board how do I go to my stakeholders and build a consensus around an idea that we should be something different you know I think Eliza boss is doing it in in Aspen with their with their compression capacity and comfort thing I think plenty of other places struggling with it especially you know in the Mid-South in terms of over tourism but thoughts about how you make that decision how if you if you're another DMO like you said it's not the same it won't be a social Enterprise it could be an intersection but how do you get to that in a world where truth control dancing you could have cooled your heels and made it through the pandemic and 4bi would still be doing the same thing yeah yeah I mean David like the honest answer is to that last part of it is sometimes I wish I'd done that because it was it was you know it's easy but I've never been somebody that you know I I've always worked in this not-for-profit world I've been involved in sport and other things and I and I've come to the conclusion in my time in life that it's because I have a certain passion I didn't you know I didn't want to work within the corridors of government which many friends and colleagues have done it's a different it's a different Dynamic so for for for people out there yeah it's exciting time for these destinations that are really recognizing their role can be different you know for me for us I read a book and it's part of the story it was called the obstacles the way and it's by Ryan holiday and it's really about still a philosophy that there are problems in front of all of us at any time in our lives and how do you take and not just get past the problem but how do you take advantage of that so it created this idea that I started thinking through and it was well we can be different as an organization I look back in time and think okay so we had a new agreement with our provincial Crown Corporation Called destination British Columbia it wasn't exactly what we had hoped our place in this system was but it made us examine well wait a minute if we look at this differently we look at it as an opportunity then we can actually make the decision and what I'm driving at is in that moment we made a decision to be different we chose to be different and I think everyone can and make that I look back and go wow if we got everything we'd asked government for if we've gotten millions of dollars for marketing and millions of dollars for you know this term destination management where would we be today and I actually think this is where we want to be right where we are in making this difference and I I think it's a good and a bad thing for places that have they have dedicated resources right so you know you're a community and you have a flow of funds and visitation is good and you have your funds and then you have to convince a group of stakeholders and sometimes those are accommodations and Resorts and things like that but hey we need to actually put our purpose different from bringing more people here to serving the people of the resident and that would be that's a really challenging discussion and for us we were able to make this change because we had a business driver and now we can we can influence others and so I think that people you know again for for us it's a simple equation the simple equation is we cannot stand here as tourism professionals I guess or um you know asking people to visit our destination without recognizing that these impacts are real in communities and when in the pandemic when we were before small town Mayors and they were saying why do we need this we're funding you why do why are we finding you I can't drive my car into my driveway and so I thought to myself well you know we all thought well this is the moment we have to look at this differently and really have a different discussion and it's not easy it's not an easy discussion with people invested in tourism but it's easy for the people who live in communities because communities they're you know people who like I think you know I think I've heard you say but I've heard others say and I believe this by and large people that live on Vancouver they don't care about what I do they don't care about tourism really they they care about what happens in their community and what they can do in these communities and that's really where I want to dig in when you have that discussion with the mayor who says oh come on I can't drive my car I mean you're reaching but you're sort of saying well you know unless we tackle this head-on we'll never solve the problem of people not being able to drive their cars and we see it we see that compression in lots of little towns a little town I live in in Ontario Paris now seeing massive weekend compression because of its you know proximity to the river the point is the social Enterprise that's for the eye the long-term one of the long-term objectives is is this cue point this point where you can drive your car where the resident comes and shares I mean you like to talk a lot and you mentioned in the past Copenhagen Cigna understands come and be a local all of those things inspired us um but I'm going to ask you this when it comes down to doing businesses for bi let's let's let's you know let's not um obscure the matter here 4bi still does business in a very a very all the traditional things in tourism you have four uh major pillars or columns as you call them in the model business communication culture and the environment but you're really in essence you're still playing that that um catalytic role you're just now driving awareness of the island off the backs of authentic stories and people driving media rather than it coming through your central Channel and your primary purpose being this website thing that was you know tours maker out now you're now you're enabling those stakeholders tell me about the last 12 months when you went out there because I do believe that if your story had not been as big as a social Enterprise I'm not sure you would have got the tracks you needed with the stakeholders to get them to listen and say is something different really going on here or is it just yeah yeah I mean I I every day I talk to my team we talk about the beater if I can say that about like this has got to be a real thing and so it started in the right direction you know by and large I it's been a real eye-opener for me because we did this because there was a business reason we thought it was the right thing to do and then it took off and when you talk to people in Vancouver Island about what we're doing they get it instantly when I would tell them that I worked at tourism make around and they'd say oh well what do you do and they'd be like is that some marketing or whatever they they really didn't understand it but when you start talking about wanting to provide benefits to in a social way I I cannot tell you how defining it has been for all of us here whether it's elected level uh environment you know um Economic Development people uh this but the businesses themselves have really gravitated towards this idea because all of them exist in communities whether it's small town or big town and they all want to do the right thing by the people who live there they're all trying to grapple with this issue and so when they saw us as making a change that is talking about sustainability and climate action and other issues and not only that but changing our governance where people who live here have access into our governance here I mean I the conversation just changed almost instantly and it's been really interesting it's where the tourism industry has been slow to respond positively well I shouldn't say that actually by and large has been very positive at the business level but the structures that we support and have been a part of traditionally have not all gravitated to it somehow by and large European destinations have been they're the ones that have called me repeatedly I've done I'm doing a presentation at ITB coming up because in Europe they're really interested in this social like tourism is impacting social good right they see that and in Canada it hasn't been responded to as quickly I I think the day is coming but anyway I think it's really I think it's really important though you point out the business link on that because I was asked the question literally yesterday I had to write a little piece on what is it businesses uh how do we track the attention of businesses as destination patients and destination organizations and then you think about it you say well hang on businesses are attracted to things that are endorsed and valued by the community it's almost a straight route back to Jack Johnson in this community shared values you know we like water treatment plants because we like clean water we like you know uh Professional Services because we like good you know mental health opportunities in other places you know what's what's you know what's the social value of Tourism um if you don't start doing four VI type stuff it becomes it becomes a computation of cash register ratings and it really doesn't attract anybody I mean it's great to make money while the sun shines but we all know that Imperial model is being sort of a shoot around the world so you know really what you know that idea that you've engaged with destinations and you're asking them what's the social value of Tourism that's a very it's a it's a powerful thing yeah I mean it's at the destination level what we call Destination level again you know community these they don't they don't see themselves outweigh their community and there's businesses in that Community we I've always felt passionately like if you like to take your family out for breakfast on a Sunday morning or on a brunch or whatever that that business can only exist if people in the community support it along with people who are visiting that community and so I guess part of the story of 4bi is that we helped launch this thing that we call the tourism resiliency program that ended up serving you know it we we uncovered in the pandemic and covered millions of dollars to help support businesses and first survive so it was created on Vancouver Island about 600 plus businesses we supported with experts and all that and then it changed over time and here's where it changed that was super interesting by the by the year two of the pandemic we don't we wanted businesses number one thing they wanted to help us with was helping them be more of a sustainable business it wasn't attracting more more people to their business they needed help with that but they didn't want us doing it they just went wanted to know how do I reach more people so that's one thing but the number one thing they wanted they wanted to know how they could be more sustainable as a business and very closely after that was they were wondering how they could be more and we haven't solved this one yet there's many things we haven't solved but is helping businesses be more um carbon neutral or understand their carbon footprint so that was the second one and it wasn't you know really what we expected but I think what businesses were seeing is the feedback they were getting was they'd come through this time they've learned to adapt and survive and they wanted to you know be have a stronger place in their community and so that that was part of what went into our thinking but isn't the beauty of that one too this that what they asked you for the sustainability piece it wasn't like they asked you for new roller skates or a marquee they asked you for something that the visitor and the traveler is starting to Value more and more and more so they're saying we get it we get it you know we position ourselves as a sustainable place I want to be a sustainable business and We Know The Travelers becoming tremendously more Discerning and the beauty of that one is it doesn't it's it's it's virtuous it's virtuous uh Circle in some sense because it just makes the island more sustainable it builds competence and confidence among your businesses and you know as much as traditional tourism marketing models here what do you do in playing and sustainability why is your own function there you say because the long-term prospects of the visitation this island are completely tied to sustainability that's why people come yeah I mean I I would say um what you said earlier I should have I wanted to mention was that we we still Market Vancouver Island we tell the sustainability story we're not we're not we're not going doing traditional ads we're not you know we're not doing that stuff what we're doing is we're trying to make sure that people know who come here how we're attempting to be the most sustainable place for communities and and residents who live here because it's important to people here and so it's a different way of you know I I think that the industry by and large has been a little they're still slowly gaining ground on this idea that tourism isn't just about attracting people to a place it should also be defined helping tell the story of the place differently and that's something that we're still working on but I I guess that's a lesson learned I I've been really taken aback by um you know we had a golden mail at the end of the year included Vancouver Island in a feature of 10 other destinations in the world that have signed the Glasgow deck operation around being carbon neutral by 2030 and or 2050 and cut our carbon in half by 2030 and have a plant anyway we were chosen partly because the destination but we are chosen because our organization changed as a into the social purpose and I couldn't believe it I was like wow like here we are that's marketing like that's actually telling the story of Vancouver Island it's not just marketing it's massively effective embedded social marketing that sends a message in the form of information it's the best kind of marketing it is I I couldn't agree more I mean there's so it just opens so much I just can't believe that this you know this boy in my career just how differently my thinking is I mean every minute I think about everything I do my family I have a young you know young daughter you know we we went spring break last year before we launched this thing we went to Hawaii for two weeks now I think when I do that trip again like I actually think through I hear you or how would I do it like I just think so differently about because our impacts are real and I'm just you know you see it every day in the place you live and I don't want to make those same impacts when I travel somewhere so I'm constantly thinking and I'm sure we all are and I think you know I don't know I I will this is it's going to be a fascinating Journey all right so we're running up on time but let's let's talk about this for a second the population down is about 800 000 right yeah all right you see more than four and a half million visitors a year I just I just saw the rest of the world knows the island is an island it's not you so people hear Vancouver and they hear Vancouver Island if you don't live here maybe you don't get it the island is an island it's off the coast it's it's a 20 it's a 15 minute flight by a puddle jumper um four and a half million visitors to 800 000. it doesn't really paint the picture though because you know that that sort of five or six to one ratio is actually exacerbated look at places like Tofino where I've heard it's 300 to 1 in terms of visitors to Residents right yeah it's about right yeah that's right so again you know looking at the long-term prospects of of the island you could you could not do this but in five years that'll be six hundred to one or seven and then we won't be walking through those forests we just won't because it's it can't be maintained at that those kind of levels can it no I mean this is I mean we saw in the pandemic but we we've seen since the pandemic even these the real impacts right because Vancouver Island was one of the most well you know we had this moment in uh 20 the summer of 2021 there was a two-week period in August where we had more people in Vancouver and than we'd ever had in human history and we know this through cell phone data right but here's the thing David this is fascinating it was only Canadian Travelers there wasn't all these people so for two weeks we had more people and that top peak was that was a defining moment that was a moment where we were like holy like and so you know there aren't easy answers to any of this there is envelope interlocut territory um if you travel to the West Coast vancouverne there's this wonderful hot springs that are on an island up the coast and it's long been a place that people love to go well the teloku who manages the park and the talkative management are limiting people accessing that now for the first time that'll have commercial consequences they'll have all these consequences and I really believe believe that the world wherever people travel in the world these are the things that we really have to figure out because I think these impacts that humans are having um and we all want to have these experiences but at what point are we damaging the you know the biodiversity of these places and that's what we saw in the pandemic time and time again and there's you know that's that's the big question how are we going to are we just going to keep inviting people to places that are maxing out like how are we going to Grapple with these issues I I don't know because I I think we only let the genie out of the bottle in in you know when we compare when we look at examples like Barcelona and Venice is that ever going straight back in the bottle the same way I I don't think so right no it's and again our role we're trying to figure out what balance looks like for communities for places on Vancouver Island I you know we pay again as this social Enterprise we've we've been we've been allowed to allowed isn't the right word but we've we started talking to people in places like like you mentioned Barcelona but there's many others and um I I think these are the conversations we want to be a part of we want to find what balance looks like for Vancouver and hopefully measure what success looks like differently than just the economic benefit of it right you said it in there though Anthony poor bi is a social Enterprise but you I will I will I will state this as a fact for you you have a social license we all feel it we we feel it and you're talking in other places your your community has tacitly and that's the only way we're gonna get these socializes is they're not they're not constitutions or written down but they are based on your letters Pat the things you claim to do as an organization there's no question in my mind you have a social license from a vast number of your population to go out and talk to Barcelona to figure these things out and I think that's really cool and I think we should come back to this discussion because we got to talk more as as professionals how do you get that social license it's it's earned and it's hard you were brilliant in your timing of it I think that helped a lot I think a lot of people took a great a lot of smart people to Great advantage of the pandemic you really important things but now we got to do it on a mass scale yeah yeah it's about action now and that's what we think about all the time and why the social enterprise process is so important because we will take what we can make and and give it over an impact way to things that we can support to make a difference and it we're not you know my dream is tens of millions of dollars but right now we you know we're starting where we can start and that's the difference we can make it's we have to be action oriented because the industry has talked about systems it's talked about impacts it's talked about all these things but let's actually find something we can make a difference on and that's us that's what we're trying to do well it takes it takes a bold first step I got to tell you we all sit back and awe even after a decade of doing stuff like you did when you when you dropped the mic I went [Laughter] your team was fantastic I love the open-mindedness um you know if if we could do more Vi um for the eye that would be great oh thanks thanks stumbling thank you all right all right so last word to you anything you want to see to our peers I know you and I both regularly talk to peers on the continent in the United States uh DMO leaders all around the world are getting started on this yeah I I all I can say is thanks for being a connector and I want to connect with more people that um we can start having these kind of robust discussions globally I think that's how important it is so thank you for your voice and invite me again and I'll be here yeah yeah definitely didn't become Blockbuster Video oh that's good excuse me

2023-04-19 19:12

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