Beaver Valley Sustainable Tourism Strategy

The Beaver Valley Sustainable Tourism Strategy and supporting action plan will address the following objectives:

1. Understanding the background and context surrounding tourism in the Beaver Valley Corridor.
2. Gathering insight, input, and feedback from a diversity of stakeholders.
3. Identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges for tourism in the Beaver Valley.
4. Co-creating a sustainable tourism strategy with a long-term vision for the Beaver Valley Corridor and confirming actions for the coming years.
5. Establishing a clear understanding of the roles, responsibilities, and resources needed to implement an action plan.

Several factors inform the need and timeliness for this project, including considerable growth in recent years, planned re-development of significant properties in the Beaver Valley, and infrastructure and space constraints. These factors require action to mitigate negative visitor impacts and resident conflicts.

The project involves four phases. 

• Phase 1: Project Initiation, Management, and Communications (Q1 2023)
• Phase 2: Research and Engagement Planning (Q1 2023)
• Phase 3: Market Research and Landscape Assessment (Q2 2023)
• Phase 4: Strategy Development and Implementation Planning (Q3 2023)

Several categories of stakeholders will be engaged across the project. This includes, but is not limited to, visitor-facing businesses, residents from rural areas across the corridor, community groups, and tourism organizations and partners active in the area.

Work is expected to be completed by the end of 2023.

Phase 3: Market Research and Landscape Assessment

This project has taken a stakeholder-driven and community-based participatory research approach using a variety of research methods. To date, we have:

• Reviewed key documents to provide background and context.
• Conducted a tourism community survey with responses from over 250 tourism stakeholders, including tourism business owners and operators, residents, tourism organizations, and community groups.
• Conducted telephone and virtual interviews with tourism and community leaders.
• Hosted two (2) in-person and one (1) virtual industry table talks with local business owners and operators.
• Completed a tourism asset scan through the review of visitor-facing organizational websites.
• Conducted good practice and trends research on three (3) places similar to Beaver Valley to learn about their approach to tourism and lessons learned.
• Hosted a future tourism exploration session with representatives from government bodies and agencies, community development organizations, and community groups.

Grey County, the Municipality of Grey Highlands, the Town of The Blue Mountains, and Regional Tourism Organization 7: BruceGreySimcoe have partnered and received funding from the Province of Ontario to develop the Beaver Valley Sustainable Tourism Strategy and three-year action plan.

The project partners have engaged Bannikin to facilitate the research and strategy development process. Bannkin is a Canadian-based professional services company operating in the tourism space and specializing in strategy, development, and public relations. As part of their strategy and development work, Bannikin relies on community-based and participatory research to inform decision-making around capitalizing on tourism development and management opportunities.