KVA gunning for late season tourism surge

By Kelly-Anne Riess

Whitehorse Star, August 3, 2004

Dawson City’s tourism operators are hoping to make up for lost tourism after forest fires in the area devastated local businesses.

The Klondike Visitors Association (KVA) has launched a new advertising campaign trying to target Alaskan visitors who might want to head to Dawson this month.

It’s hoped that the advertising blitz, which will include television, radio, print and Internet ads, will offset lost tourism in the area.

Some of the ads will offer Alaskans coupons to Diamond Tooth Gerties gambling casino since there are no casinos at all in America’s northern-most state.

“That makes Dawson the perfect place,” Wendy Burns, the KVA’s manager of marketing and promotions, said in an interview today. Many Alaskans go to Dawson for weekend getaways, she added.

Other ads will attempt to attract those from the south coming back south from Alaskan holidays.

“We just want people to know that we are open for business,” said Burns.

She said the town saw the cancellation of bus tours when fires were at their peak in July. At one point, there were 40 fires burning in that area.

Although there are still 37 active Dawson fires, Paula Webber, a spokeswoman for Wildland Fire Management, said the area

has quieted down a lot since July.

“The sun is shining and it’s green and beautiful out here,” Burns said about current Dawson weather.

According to the association, some Dawson businesses have lost up to 65 per cent of their bookings, while others have lost only five per cent.

Among the hardest-hit were bed and breakfasts and RV parks, said Burns.

Gail Hendley, manager of the Bonanza Gold RV Park and Motel, said today its business has dropped 80 per cent. She blames the media for scaring tourists away.

“It’s been very bad ... very, very, very bad,” she said. “It was starting out to be the very best year we ever had and then the news media killed us.”

Even Burns said she had phone calls from Europe from people asking about evacuations.

Hendley said someone should have stood up for the Dawson tourism industry.

“We have no mayor, no council to help us. The Minister of Tourism (Elaine Taylor) didn’t say anything. Our MLA (Peter Jenkins) said nothing. There was no help.”

The Yukon government is helping pay for the $16,000 worth of ads that will hit the Anchorage and Fairbanks areas this week.

The KVA will be making use of the tourism co-operative marketing fund that was introduced this past spring to provide the tourism industry with a few extra marketing dollars.

“The Department of Tourism and Culture is supporting the Klondike Visitors Association to actively convey the message that the Klondike was, and continues to be a safe tourist destination,” Taylor said in a statement released Monday.

Dick Van Nostrand, owner of the Downtown Hotel in Dawson, said business at his place dropped only 10 to 15 per cent.

“We were lucky because we had a number of firefighters staying with us during the worst of it,” Van Nostrand said today.

“But we had three Princess tours cancel on us.”

He and Hendley are hoping the new ads will draw a few extra visitors to help recover their losses.

“It’s a stab in the dark. Otherwise, we’d just have to sit on our hands,” said Van Nostrand.

The fires couldn’t have struck at a worse time, he said, as the tourism industry is only just beginning to recover from the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S.

On an average year, the Klondike receives 65,000 visitors.

Klondike Fire Centre Takes Command Of Goldfields Complex

DAWSON CITY ­ The Klondike Fire Centre has resumed command of the goldfields complex fires to the south of Dawson City.

Successive incident management teams from Ontario and Saskatchewan had been in charge of the complex since July 3. Over the last week, the Saskatchewan team has closed down their command post in the Robert Service School and headed for home.

“We were very fortunate to have had two incident management teams here to help manage these fires over the last month,” Klondike Zone Protection Manager Dan Baikie said. “Both teams, first from Ontario and most recently from Saskatchewan, have made significant headway toward containing these fires. The fire centre has been doing initial attack, monitoring wilderness fires, and maintaining overall command of the district. We are now taking direct command of the goldfields fires, including all of the Yukon, Saskatchewan and Ontario firefighting crews currently assigned to those fires.”

Baikie indicated some of the firefighters will assist with initial attack operations and most of the remaining crews will continue to work in the goldfields.

The 36 active fires in the zone are not considered a threat to life, personal property or the community at this time. Lower fire activity means that smoke conditions have improved and Dawson City remains open for business.

“The district is now in a very good position to reassume command of the fires and manage suppression efforts from the base, and our team is no longer necessary,” Saskatchewan Incident Commander John deBruin said. “We’d like to thank the community of Dawson City for its support and hospitality while we were here.”

Wildland Fire Management Head Ken Colbert expressed his thanks to the departing Saskatchewan team.

“The Saskatchewan team did a great job in helping us manage the fire situation in the Dawson area. Their expertise and management resources were invaluable and very much appreciated.”

With the change over, all fire fighting efforts in the zone will be based out of the Klondike Fire Centre located at the Dawson City airport.

Klondike fire information is now available at the Klondike Fire Zone at (867) 993-5752 or by calling (867) 393-7415 or toll free 1-800-826-4750.

Chamber Not Happy with Government or Press Response

by Dan Davidson

The Dawson Chamber of Commerce is pleased that the Department of Tourism has joined with the KVA to attempt to salvage the rest of the tourism season with an advertising blitz, but members spent some of their August luncheon wondering where the government had been during the height of the fire crisis, when news of the fires was cutting the heart out of the tourist season.

Members who have been meeting with Elaine Taylor, the Minister of Tourism, during the last week, have been giving her their concerns, as summarized by Pat Brooks of the Goldrush Campground at the meeting.

“We’ve heard from EMO, from the Forestry people, heard from a bunch of different people, and unfortunately we didn’t hear from anyone at a higher level of government to back up what the forestry people were saying and to emphasize the fact that we were still open for business.

“There was an awful lot of alarming news that was reported that in some cases wasn’t entirely factual.”

In the past, negative fire season reporting has always drawn a spirited response from the municipal government. This season was unique in that Dawson had no elected mayor and council to speak up. Trustee Ray Hayes continuously emphasized the positive in his press interviews, but a government appointee just doesn’t carry as much weight in such matters as an elected official.

“The rumour mill was what I think killed us,” Brooks said. “We found a lot of people who had talked to other people who had it on good authority because they’d talked to someone in a laundromat. They were told you couldn’t get here. Our doors were locked. Chicken has burned down seven or eight times.

“It was one of those situations where - how do you counter that?”

“There was no comment from anyone at the upper level, the deputy minister level, or anything, to bring it down to a level that the traveller could understand or could relate to,” Brooks said.

Jon Magnusson, of Dawson City Bed and Breakfast, feels that the whole reaction to the events of July got out of hand.

“We had a fire OUTSIDE of our town. We didn’t have a fire IN our town. We didn’t LOSE our town. We got off very lightly. Other places, like in B.C. the last couple of years, they have to start from scratch. We had a fire nearby.

“We’ve got to learn to be more positive. The press only looks for negative stuff, and if you have a negative comment to make that’s what’s going to go in the story, in the headlines, right across Canada.”

Magnusson cited the evacuation reports out of Edmonton which really only involved about twenty-five miners. He told his fellow business owners that they should be careful when speaking to the press, and refuse to speak to them at all if they sense that the reporter is only interested in negative comments.

“We’re in business, and if you want to stay in business, you don’t say that your business is dying, that you’re going to close early - you don’t do any of that. You say, ‘Somewhere down the road it’s going to get better.’

“And it is. We’re still here. There are so many other places that have floods, bad weather, fire. We don’t have any of that. We’ve got to think of ourselves as very fortunate.”

Magnusson noted that not all businesses in Dawson felt the same impact during July. A KVA survey has indicated that previously confirmed bookings at hotels and campgrounds were hurt, falling between 5% and 65% during July.

“I know some of you were hurt more than others,” Magnusson told the group, “but others weren’t hurt at all, in they’ve done even better. Next year maybe they’ll do a little worse and you’ll do better.”

Both Magnusson and Brooks decried the lack of pro-active publicity on the part of the YTG.