Cortes Island's first two Tourism Cafes

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Close to 40 residents turned out to the first two Tourism Cafes on Cortes Island. The Cortes Community Economic Development Association (CCEDA) brought in Lesley Anderson and Nancy Arsenault to facilitate meetings at Mansons and Gorge Halls last week. The pair will host a virtual Tourism Cafe on Wednesday, November 1st from 10 am to 12 pm, and return in January to present their findings.

“ People came out of the meeting feeling a lot more informed about this planning process and how it can be a force for better tourism outcomes on the island in the future. A process like this can be really useful and it doesn’t have to result in greater tourism. It’s how we can nuance that tourism and make it better for the island and just attract the right visitors,” explained Kate Madigan, Economic Development Officer of CCEDA.

“We had quite a range of feedback. A lot of people are kind of like, ‘ Why are we doing this? We’ve got enough tourism on Cortes, we don’t need any more’ – And that’s true.”

“Lesley and Nancy of Tourism Cafe explained we don’t want tourism to happen haphazardly. We want to be able to plan it and manage it in a way that is good for the community. If you don’t get involved in how tourism is evolving on your island, it might evolve in a way that is not good for the community. This is why we’re doing this exercise.”

“There’s a lot of tourists out there. We don’t want to be everything to everybody. We want to attract the kind of tourists that respect our island way of life, that respect how we want tourism to evolve. We did spend a lot of time discussing that.”