C A N A D I A N
EDITORIAL
Rehearsing the Great B.C. ShakeOut My father, Thomas McCavour, is currently putting the finishing touches on a novel titled, The Power of Ten, which will come out in 2017. Its subject is a tremendous earthquake and tsunami with its epicentre in the Straight of Georgia, which destroys much of Vancouver Island and B.C.’s Lower Mainland. It’s fiction, but it’s not far fetched. Earthquaketrack.com reported that there were 490 earthquakes in B.C. in the past year of magnitude 1.5 or greater. In the past year, there have been four earthquakes of 5.0 magnitude or more off the coast of Vancouver Island. It was those recent earthquakes that prompted Kara Van Der Vlugt, social media and marketing manager at the DoubleTree by Hilton Victoria, to call friends who worked at ShakeOut B.C. to ask about earthquake preparedness, and then approach the hotel’s management to set up an earthquake drill. That drill took place on Oct. 18, a couple of days before ShakeOut B.C.’s province-
wide earthquake drill on Oct. 20. The DoubleTree event included training of housekeeping, engineering and front-ofhouse staff based on information from ShakeOut B.C. The training included “drop, cover and hold on,” how to assist guests in doing this too, and use of the intercom system to let staff and guests know if it was necessary to evacuate or stay put. Three people from ShakeOut B.C. assisted in the drill. “The ShakeOut people were great at explaining to guests how to drop, cover and hold on,” said Van Der Vlugt. “We also had a letter in each room explaining the drill.” The earthquake drill came in two parts. The first involved a rumbling sound throughout the whole building, signalling the drill for staff. They reacted quickly, taking shelter under desks and tables. The second part was a fire drill, in which the Victoria Fire Department and building maintenance staff provided a rapid assessment, and evacuated participants to their muster stations. “The guest reactions were really positive,” said Van Der Vlugt. “A few guests wanted to
participate. They were thrilled that hotel staff had the knowledge of how to react.” ShakeOut B.C. also offers a tsunami evacuation drill. “You have 76 minutes to get to higher ground. If the higher floors of our building were structurally sound, we would evacuate guests there; if not, we would send them further away,” said Van Der Vlugt. Other B.C. hotels were among the 800,000 people in the province who participated in The Great British Columbia ShakeOut. Black Rock Oceanfront Resort in Ucluelet, Middle Beach Lodge and Tofino Hostel in Tofino, Westin Bear Mountain Golf Resort and Spa and Hotel Grand Pacific in Victoria; and Listel Hotel and Trump International Hotel & Tower in Vancouver were listed on the Great British Columbia ShakeOut website as participants. Eleven hotels with 835 participants were registered in Canada. The worldwide total is almost 55 million people registered in 2016 Great ShakeOut drills as of Oct. 31.
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SPOTLIGHT
Travel trends for Canadian Rockies By Larry Mogelonsky Tourism to the Rocky Mountain regions of Alberta and B.C. has long attracted people to visit our great nation. While downhill skiing is still the leading attraction, there are fascinating developments that may cause a tremendous upswing in travel throughout the calendar year. Nothing brought this into focus until my most recent visit to the area, staying at St. Eugene Golf Resort and Casino, a 125room property just outside of Cranbrook, B.C. The purpose of my summer trip was to see firsthand how the Kootenays – the easternmost valleys to the west of the Rockies – were developing their seasonal tourism prowess and to shed some light on two important trends.
Adventure Tourism Gone Global We no longer want to simply visit; we want to do! While the urban markets will always be able to lure prospective guests with their proximity to convention centres, great attractions, shopping, nightlife, museums and historic sites, rural or resort properties must now offer experiential activities to set themselves apart. Indeed, we are already seeing this to a great extent with the ‘sun destinations,’ where it’s no longer just about snoozing on the beach, but what the territory has to offer and how activities can be packaged into halfday or full-day experiences. What I learned from my trip to the Kootenays is that this trend is already worldwide and will soon be
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an expectation rather than a value-add. Everyone from the young family on a budget to the eloping wedding party or business group on a corporate retreat wants to be active while travelling. This echoes the conversations I had with DMO and CVB operators at ITB Berlin way back in March. The general consensus among this largely European crowd was, “Yeah, we’ve seen Manhattan and we’ve been to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We aren’t coming to you for culture or history. My hometown has more of both than your entire continent. We want forests, camping, untouched lakes, kayaking, bear sightseeing – we want nature!” Your property as just the beginning of the guest’s journey. Undoubtedly your region has exceptional, authentic and interactive experiences to offer, and it’s your responsibility to bring them to your customer’s attention. You might want to consider building a few of these activities onsite so guests never, ever have an inkling of boredom while on property. If you don’t, travellers will inevitably migrate to other hotels or territories where these adventures are available and marketed.
Birch is the New Maple As every hotelier knows, a successful hotel must marry great experiences with exceptional food. As maple and peameal bacon have long been the stereotypes of Canadian cuisine, it’s about time we reinvented the wheel slightly. St. Eugene’s executive chef, Ronny Belkin, infuses just about everything on the menu with Canada’s next claim to fame – birch syrup. Like its maple counterpart, birch syrup comes in a spectrum of colors, with amber
and amber gold suitable for direct application to foods in the form of salad vinaigrettes or a sandwich glaze, while the dark grade has a flavour somewhere between black molasses and cough syrup. Not nearly as sweet as maple syrup, this offers a reasonable explanation for why birch has yet to take North American foodies by storm. But mix the dark grade with ketchup, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar and spices (otherwise known as barbecue sauce) and you’re in flavour country, my friend. It’s also expensive. Chef Belkin was brought aboard last autumn to help rebrand St. Eugene’s previously fine dining establishment into a barbecue smokehouse. Plunking down for a meal of smoked and charred meats, it only took one bite for me to realize why he slathers everything from elk steaks to bison ribs in his patented birch barbecue sauce. All told, it’s a taste that’s wholly unique to Interior BC. If St. Eugene has any say in it, then birch syrup will indeed become the next bastion of Canadiana and economies of scale will alleviate any birch-related supply issues. This is yet another example of why you shouldn’t micromanage your culinary team. You have to give them the resources, both in budget and in time, to tinker with their chosen craft in order to devise something that is ostensibly one-of-a-kind. I’m a diehard believer that great F&B is essential to overall guest satisfaction, so do yourself a favour and see what can be done in this regard in tandem with your pursuit for other local authentic experiences. Larry Mogelonsky is the founder of LMA Communications Inc. (www.lma.ca). His work includes three books Are You an Ostrich or a Llama?, Llamas Rule and Hotel Llama. Email: larry@lma.ca.
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