Garden Tourism Development at BC Tourism Conference

Garden Tourism Update and British Columbia’s Garden Tourism Sector Development at the BC Tourism Industry Conference 2018

Gardens British Columbia is pleased to collaborate with and be the topic of a seminar titled, B-2 Sector Development: Where the Rubber Hits the Trail and Going Gardens Tourism, at the BC Tourism Conference in Kelowna, BC, March 7-9, 2018. The Conference is a high level forum for tourism businesses, destination marketers, and stakeholders from around British Columbia to learn from experts and each other about the key issues, challenges and best practices in the industry.

Brian White, a a keen member of Gardens BC, representing Royal Roads University’s Hatley Park National Historic Site will present a paper on Gardens BC sectoral development and has kindly allowed us to publish a peek at the abstract:

The garden experience in a particular state or region is often presented as a marketable tourist/visitor attraction, but the structure of the collective management and marketing of the garden tourism sector is not usually presented as a case study. In this paper, the development of Gardens British Columbia provides a sectoral case study. The membership heterogeneity of Gardens BC reflects the widely varying nature of the garden experience in the province, and provides an opportunity to examine the tourism industry sectorial approach used to provide effective marketing and promotion for export-ready gardens and garden communities. In particular, the garden manager’s leadership, collaborative approach, and the existing sectoral marketing methodology of Destination British Columbia (formerly Tourism British Columbia) provides a pathway for other jurisdictions wishing to enhance and market this highly interconnected sector.

Key Words: Garden tourism, tourism sector organization, garden management, garden tourism marketing.

Alison Partridge of Going Gardens, spent 20 years in the New Zealand tourism industry and then 10 in Canada as the Director of PR and Marketing at The Butchart Gardens. And in the last almost 10 years has developed deep insight into international garden tourism, traveling to the world’s gardens with Proof Positive Solutions/Going Gardens, that advises developing tourism product and business. She will give updates on hotspots for international garden tourism, what the developments and trends are and give a glimpse into what the future might hold for tourism in the garden sector not only internationally, but for the British Columbia garden tourism sector as well.

If you are attending the conference, join the panelists in this session to learn about the development of each of these sectors – where they are at, how they got there and where they are going. Understand the importance of having a vision, working collaboratively and having strong leadership to continually evolve a sector and achieve success.

For anyone who wishes to read Professor White’s BC Garden Tourism Sectoral paper, please email us after the conference and we would be glad to send you a copy.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in: Gardens British Columbia Launches Innovative New Web Site.