City of Canmore, Alberta, Canada

Overview

The City of Canmore, Alberta is a growing tourism community, located just 90 minutes east of Calgary, Alberta. The region has seen increasing visitation in recent years, with this trend only expected to continue.

BHA, following the lead of Western Management Consultants (WMC) and Desticorp (UK) Ltd., was retained to assist in the creation of a Sustainable Economic Development & Tourism Strategy to inform economic and tourism development in the City of Canmore. Working closely with Development and Planning staff at the City of Canmore, BHA carried out a community-based planning exercise, working with local stakeholders to determine the optimal approach to leverage growing visitation, and deliver sustained economic prosperity within. Through a series of stakeholder workshops, and close collaboration with an established community task force, strategic priorities, key results and directions with respect to sustainable economic and tourism development were determined. With this understanding, BHA compared the City of Canmore to similar tourism-oriented towns, highlighting opportunities and constraints on future development. Following review by city staff and local stakeholders, a made-in-Canmore definition of sustainable economic development was established.

These findings were integrated and consolidated into the Sustainable Economic Development and Tourism Strategy for Canmore. It included a realistic implementation program and action plan with linkages to other current and relevant plans of the community.