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HomeNewsTourism Lethbridge looking to double each dollar from the city this year

Tourism Lethbridge looking to double each dollar from the city this year

Tourism Lethbridge is hoping to be close to doubling each dollar it receives from the City of Lethbridge in 2023. CEO Erin Crane presented stats from last year and plans for this year at the organization’s annual general meeting last week. She said there were more than 1,100 events tracked last year with more than 200 of them bringing in visitors from outside the community.

“I think that number is a lot higher and hopefully the more that we do this, the better we are going to get at tracking this information,” Crane said. “We believe that those events that we already host, that 1,100, many of those could be maximized to bring visitors from other places to our community so we have a lot of work to do.”

Crane said the organization has an action plan to increase the amount of events that bring people in this year. In 2020, Crane said Tourism Lethbridge leveraged 12 cents to each dollar the city gave the organization. That number has been steadily growing since, with 52 cents leverage to the dollar last year. For 2023, she estimates it will be 93 cents.

“We are almost doubling what we get from the city of Lethbridge so we can do more for this community to bring more visitors and to grow that economic impact,” she said. “We believe that marketing is great, but it needs to be followed up with that robust sales and public relations strategy.”

The strategy for attracting tourists is changing this year, according to both Crane and Andi Dzilums, manager of destination development with Travel Alberta.

“We used to be a destination market organization, so 80 per cent of our budget probably went towards marketing the province and 20 per cent was probably development — we are really flipping that on its head. I wouldn’t say in terms of our budget, but I would say in terms of our direction and really looking at that destination management organization and I know this is the direction of a lot of destination organizations across the province, as well as across the country,” Dzilums said. 

He added this year, Tourism Alberta is investing $250,000 into Tourism Lethbridge.

Crane said one big focus for Lethbridge is attracting visitors from the United States. She also emphasized the importance of locals helping attract tourism in the city and pointed out that a large portion of tourists are family and friends visiting residents.

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