TIABC Voice of Tourism Newsletter – July 4, 2025

CEO MESSAGE
If I had a nickel for every software developer that contacted me during COVID for help in pitching the Health Ministry on how their app would streamline the process of contact tracing, I would have retired to the Canary Islands by now.

Undeniably, most of the apps would have worked far more efficiently than employing individual contractors who spent hours or days trying to reach every person that may have been exposed to a virus carrier in a restaurant, grocery store, hospital, home, or whatever setting. I can only imagine how much money it cost the province by deploying a manual contact tracing method instead of utilizing a technology solution.

Fast forward a few years and there still appears to be a resistance in using a proven (but not perfect) technology solution to streamline another laborious manual process that involves securing hotel rooms for first responders, visitors and evacuees during a crisis such as a wildfire.

As you may recall, an emergency booking platform was successfully piloted in three communities by BCHA and the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness (EMCR) over the last two years to help coordinate accommodation in real time during a crisis, taking the burden off emergency support service teams to source hotel rooms and instead putting it in the hands of accommodation providers and the tourism sector.

It was a scalable digital option that members of the Tourism Emergency Management Committee (e.g. TIABC, BCRTS, BCDMOA) had been long advocating for, along with BCHA and the Ministry of Tourism, to replace the time-consuming, labour-intensive process of calling each hotel, recording occupancy/vacancy numbers on a spreadsheet, and reporting back to local agencies on where and how many rooms were available. In a fluid crisis situation where people just show up at a hotel at all hours to book a room, the spreadsheet was out of date the minute the service provider hung up the phone.

To be fair, this has nothing to do with the contractor who did an exceptional job under very trying circumstances. However, there ‘was’ a much better way to accomplish the same task by using the booking platform.

I say ‘was’ because unfortunately EMCR decided to discontinue the pilot in favour of an alternative program in which displaced residents are given a voucher to find accommodation on their own instead of relying on ‘referrals’ by emergency support services. While that might work on a small scale (e.g. a few dozen or hundred individuals), it could be disastrous for evacuees and the hotels themselves when large-scale evacuations occur like the one in West Kelowna in 2023.

TIABC, along with the BC Regional Tourism Secretariat, the BC Destination Marketing Organization Association, and CDMOs in Kamloops, Kelowna and Prince George have been supporting the BCHA in its efforts to have the pilot reinstated and more importantly, expanded across the entire province to prepare for the inevitable scenario where displaced folks desperately need a safe and secure place to stay. The cost is negligible compared to the benefits of real-time data, integration with emergency support services, safety, tracking, communication, and much more.

While our coalition has reached an impasse with the province, we’re not giving up in our lobbying efforts to find a palatable solution for all concerned. Stay tuned.

These days I still get approached by app developers with the latest and greatest digital solution to problems I’m not sure even exist yet. Before I agree to help them pitch government, I ask for a 50 percent commission on any sales or adoption of their app. So far no one has agreed to my terms…hence the reason I remain firmly ensconced in Surrey instead of lying on a beach in Southern Spain.

Walt Judas

CEO, TIABC