Destination Osoyoos (DO) is going to be concentrating more efforts on promoting “shoulder season” events like the upcoming food, wine and film festival called Devour that is set to make its debut in early May.

Kelly Glazer, the executive director with DO, told Town of Osoyoos council on Monday that virtually every hotel room in Osoyoos is booked during the prime tourist season in July and August, so the focus is switching more to shoulder tourist season events like Devour.

Members of council had asked Glazer if there was any chance of increasing revenue the Town receives from the Municipal and Regional District Tax (MRDT) charged by hotel and motel owners in Osoyoos.

“We’ve reached capacity in our major earning months,” said Glazer. “Any growth we can expect in those months is going to come from increased rates. The appetite to do that I don’t feel is particularly strong.”

The MRDT has been charging a two per cent surtax on all short-term hotel and motel stays in Osoyoos for several years, with the proceeds going to fund DO’s operations as the Town’s tourism marketing agency.

The MRDT, which is a provincial tax, isn’t charged to the more than 2,000 snowbirds who have flocked to Osoyoos motels and hotels over the past several winters and the provincial government hasn’t shown any indication it wants to change the program, said Glazer.

“It’s a tax and the province has zero interest in increasing any kind of tax,” she said.

Meanwhile, provincial government managers have approached her about possibly moving Destination Osoyoos’ headquarters back to the Osoyoos Visitor’s Centre, located north of the Husky gas station on Hwy. 97, Glazer told council.

Destination Osoyoos used to have its head office operate out of the visitor’s centre, but has been operating out of its current home in a building adjacent to town hall on Main Street for more than three years.

Glazer told her provincial counterparts that the Town would have to own the building for that to happen and the province would have to be willing to provide adequate funding to help operate the building.

She also informed officials about the importance of the government continuing its support of the Resort Municipality Initiative (RMI) program, which provides funding to 14 resort municipalities across B.C. including Osoyoos.

This program has contributed an average of more than $400,000 annually in Osoyoos over the past several years and the funding has helped pay for numerous community projects designed to promote and support tourism in our community.

“The RMI is crucial to town’s like ours,” she said.

Glazer returned recently from the Devour festival in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, which is a week-long celebration of food, wine and film.

Glazer announced in October that Destination Osoyoos would be hosting its own Devour festival in early May and told council she’s more excited than ever about this event having returned recently from attending the event in Nova Scotia.

The inaugural Osoyoos Devour festival will run from May 5-7, she said.

The target market will be residents of the Lower Mainland and include the same demographic that come from this region to attend the Osoyoos Oyster Festival held in April over the past several years, she said.

She expects the Devour festival to become successful immediately, said Glazer.

The DO board hasn’t yet completed a detailed business plan for its economic development projections for 2017, but is working on it and hopes to make a presentation to council about this in early 2017, said Glazer.

Mayor Sue McKortoff thanked Glazer for her presentation and said she’s looking forward to the Devour festival and is confident it will be a successful event.

KEITH LACEY

Osoyoos Times