Beiseker Village council approved an expenditure of $550 on Feb. 25 to send two people to the Growing Rural Tourism Conference in Camrose in April.
Roger Stevenson, a member of the Beiseker economic development board, and the Village’s Assistant CAO Gail Peckham will attend the conference, which will run from April 8 to 10 at the Camrose Regional Exhibition.
It’s the 13th annual Growing Rural Tourism Conference, and Peckham has attended in the past and says it’s a great opportunity for rural communities to improve their tourism.
“We go to enhance our little tourist area here in Beiseker, but also we go as from an economic development point of view, too,” said Peckham. “Not only trying to enhance tourism-wise, but the more people that know about us, hopefully the more economic growth we’re going to have.
“Whether it be through attracting business because maybe a tourist comes into town and likes our little town and thinks it would be a good place to set up shop.”
Peckham said she is looking forward the conference because of the things she can learn from the delegates on how to draw people into the community of Beiseker.
“We’re located at an awesome (location) at the corner of (highways) 729 and 806, we get a lot of traffic through here so we just try and develop tools of how to get people to come into town, possibly spend some tourism bucks, whether it be through the cafes or the gas station or the grocery store or the hotel and (bed and breakfast),” she said.
“From an economic development point of view, when they come to town, they might like what they have to see.”
Peckham listed the municipal museum and the railway museum, currently under construction, and Squirt the Skunk, which the Village believes to be the largest skunk statue in the world, as key tourist attractions in Beiseker.
Beiseker CAO Jo-Anne Lambert says a big reason they like to attend the conference is the ability to network with experts like keynote speakers Jeff Tobe, David Ivan, Jon Schallert and Julie and Colin Angus.
“Small communities can’t afford the expert people like the bigger cities can and so our economic development officers aren’t always a specialist in that department but we want to try and attract people to our communities too,” said Lambert. “So this is one way of getting ideas and what works, what doesn’t work, from the experts at a less-expensive price than actually hiring an expert to come in and tell us what we should be doing or shouldn’t be doing.
“It’s a less-expensive way for communities, especially like ours and smaller communities to get some expertise from economic development people on how to get people interested in the advantages of living in the small towns.”
