Tourism and Hospitality
Thanks to a breath-taking natural environment, a moderate climate with four distinct seasons, and limitless recreational opportunities, tourism and hospitality is a primary economic driver in the Kootenay Development Region. The area includes four spectacular mountain ranges offering a diverse topography of rivers, lakes, waterfalls, beaches, mineral hot springs, alpine meadows, and snow-capped mountains. Extensive year-round recreational opportunities include unparalleled access to world-class power skiing, golfing, fishing, mountain biking and white-water kayaking. The Kootenay Region’s friendly residents, wonderfully restored heritage towns, thriving arts communities and gold rush boomtowns also act as a draw to tourists from around the world.
A total of 184,085 visitor parties visited the Visitor Centres (VCs) in the region in 2007, representing 11% of those visiting VCs province wide. While provincial Visitor Centre usage was down 0.2% from 2006, visitor Centre usage in the region increased 12.5% relative to 2006. Of the 2,273 fixed-roof accommodation properties listed in the 2008 British Columbia Approved Accommodation Guide, 294 or 12.9% are located in the Kootenay Rockies tourism region. While hotels and motels form the majority of the regional accommodation product in both type and capacity (49.3% of all properties in the region and 83.6% of all regional accommodation capacity are found in these two categories), cabins in the region represent nearly one-third (32.3%) of all cabins in the province and over one quarter (25.9%) of total provincial capacity.
Room revenue in the region has grown steadily from 2000 to 2007 with an annual average growth rate of 6.6%. In 2007, total room revenue in the region increased 14.5% relative to 2006, totaling $135.4 million. This accounted for 6.9% of total provincial room revenue in 2007. All Kootenay regional districts posted room revenue growth in 2007 compared to 2006. Room revenue increased in the Kootenay-Boundary district (17.1%), the East Kootenay district (14%) and in the Central Kootenay district (12.7%). The East Kootenay generated nearly half (46.4%) of the region’s room revenue and 3.4% of the provincial total. Of the urban centres, Revelstoke generated 13.7% of regional room revenue and 1.0% of the provincial total.
According to 2001 statistics, The Kootenay Development Region, known as BC’s mountain playground, features approximately one tenth of BC’s nature-based tourism businesses (255 of 2,193), including 13% of lodge-based businesses (destination lodges, guess ranches, guide outfitters), 12.6% of freshwater-based businesses (fishing, river rafting, kayaking, canoeing), and 20% of land-based businesses (hiking, ATV, bird watching, mountain biking, heli-skiing, back-country ski touring). Hosting 34.2% of the province’s ski runs (600 of 1755), the region’s largest ski facilities include Panorama Mountain Village (120 runs), Fernie Alpine Resort (107 runs), Kicking Horse Mountain Resort (106 runs), Red Mountain Resort (83 runs), Kimberley Alpine Resort (80 runs), Whitewater Ski Resort (46 runs), and Revelstoke Mountain Resort (27 runs).
The Kootenay region is also home to the province’s largest concentration of National Parks, including Mount Revelstoke, Glacier, Yoho, and Kootenay National Parks. Combined, these parks offer visitors 946 campsites (74.6% of all campsites in BC’s National Parks), as well as numerous wilderness and walk-in facilities in the backcountry areas. The Kootenay region also features over one tenth of the total number of provincial campsites (1,459 of 11,760) and 15% of private / municipal campsites (3,836 of 25,426).