The Osoyoos Desert Centre (ODC) is open once again for the season which started May 8. The team is adhering to B.C. health orders and asking that only visitors from the Interior Health region come to their facility.
While many of the limitations caused by COVID-19 restrictions are still in place at the ODC from last year, they’re optimistic to provide people with a healthy dose of nature and getting outdoors.
Jayme Friedt, ODC’s managing director, said when COVID first hit last year, their team had to seriously readjust plans for the upcoming season.
“Immediately, one of the first things we did was take a look at our budget. We have about 30 per cent of our admission revenues come from international travellers, so people who were coming from the US or Europe, England, Germany, even Japan,” she explained.
With no international visitors, the centre had to channel its energy on local tourism within B.C.
“We also started to focus our marketing, we launched an Okanagan ‘staycation’ advertising campaign immediately, so we could encourage people that were (as everybody was) in lockdown to come out and explore because a large part of what we do takes place outside,” said Friedt.
Last year, the ODC was anticipating a pretty drastic drop in revenue without having visitors from outside Canada, however, Friedt said although it definitely impacted their bottom line, it was not as bad as they anticipated.
With their staycation campaign, many people from the Okanagan region who never visited before were taking day trips to the centre as a local outing.
This year, thanks to the Community Economic Recovery Infrastructure Program (CERIP) grant from the province, the ODC has major plans to get a brand new boardwalk.
Although the construction for the new boardwalk won’t start until winter, and will only be completed for next year, the centre has been working to improve its organization in the meantime.
Along with redesigning their gift shop and updating displays, the ODC also has a new website and created a new logo.
“One of the things that we wanted to convey in our logo is our desert environment,” said Friedt. “Just the textures, shadows and light that you see in our environment, but also the signature feature of the Osoyoos Desert Centre: our boardwalk. And so we really wanted to reflect that in our logo”
As it’s difficult in our current public health situation to make plans for even a month ahead, Friedt says that they’re unsure what programs they will be able to offer as the season goes on.
Programs like their movie and expert series, artist workshops, and school tours have remained on hold since last year.
However, Friedt says with optimism that hopefully towards June they will be able to pick up on and host some of these events including the school tours, given that the provincial health restrictions can allow them to do so.
