The Transformation Award
2024
Nominee
Finalist
Shortlist
Winner
BC Tourism Climate Resiliency Initiative
Destination BC
The BC Tourism Climate Resiliency Initiative (BCTCRI) is a collaborative stewardship partnership in B.C.'s tourism sector:
Destination BC: Co-leads development and delivery, promoting sustainable growth and marketing B.C. as a tourist destination.
B.C. Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport: Co-leads development and oversight, setting tourism policies and strategic investment conditions.
Regional Destination Management Organizations: Provide regional leadership, coordinating destination management and working with local stakeholders.
Indigenous Tourism BC: Supports Indigenous tourism growth, offering experience development, training, funding access, and marketing programs.
The Initiative was born from a desire to establish a common framework for supports for both businesses and destinations in their sustainability journey, as well as creating a common set of tools to measure progress against urgent climate goals. It represents an opportunity to combine the strengths and levers of each of the organizations into a single unified platform to achieve a truly province-wide approach to long-term sustainability and climate adaptation of the tourism sector in B.C.
The BCTCRI is an innovative, industry-leading program designed to create a resilient tourism sector capable of adapting to climate change. It focuses on education, assessments, expert coaching, action planning, and adaptation to help industry enhance sustainable and environmentally responsible practices. The Initiative develops climate preparedness and adaptation strategies, provides seed funding to implement plans, and invests in a data framework to track improvements in carbon reduction and adopting sustainable practices. It also fosters a network of organizations dedicated to destination stewardship, offering educational and co-learning opportunities.
The Initiative comprises four key projects. The first provides free climate adaptation and sustainability planning for tourism businesses. The second offers grants of up to $15,000 to implement recommendations from sustainability plans. Between January and June 2024, 190 businesses received expert assistance, and $997,000 in grants were awarded to 84 businesses.
Project 3 focuses on developing a sustainability and climate adaptation data framework to align industry policies, practices, and metrics across B.C.
Project 4 establishes a provincial network of communities, including destination management organizations, municipalities, First Nations, and others, to advance the sustainable development of B.C.’s tourism industry through education and peer connections
Judges Comments
The BC Tourism Climate Resiliency Initiative is an impressive initiative which brings a multi-pronged strategy, plan and destination-wide investment in the sustainable transition.
It is well structured, has a clear purpose built upon a pressing need and it has been successful in ensuring all key partners, including BC's industry themselves are fully committed to the programme.
BCTRCRI was particularly complemented on by the judges for the various levels of intervention and how they all work to serve different needs and requirements when it comes to intervention.
The use of micro grants to enable businesses to upgrade and transform their operations, to mitigate or reduce their environmental impact sits at the heart of what makes this so important, yet the recognition that this alone requires broader stakeholder commitment and collaboration is particularly noteworthy.
Long-term, the judges felt that the data framework will provide a central pillar to working towards setting ambitious future targets, building out from a set of baseline indicators - setting-up British Columbia as a leader in driving forward action on climate change. The focus on community and destination stewardship not only advocates better understanding around the issues, but is also key to ensuring from governance down to individual stakeholders the urgency and need for change is understood.
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