Message From TOTA Board Chair - Voice Your Concerns

On behalf of the Thompson Okanagan Board of Directors and our entire TOTA team I wanted to reach out to industry with a few comments and updates.

For most of the Thompson Okanagan region, what we had hoped and needed to be a banner summer, bringing us through to the end of the pandemic and into recovery, has not materialized. Plagued with extreme heat, numerous and continuing wildfires, serious smoke conditions, alerts, evacuations and an uptick in COVID numbers, we know the losses to our industry continue to escalate and are devastating.

Working together, myself as your TOTA Chair and board member on TIABC; TOTA CEO Ellen Walker-Matthews; Ingrid Jarrett, BCHA CEO and past TOTA Chair; as well as many other regional partners, we are in direct ongoing conversations with both TIABC CEO Walt Judas and BC Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport officials. We have been and continue to brief them on the immediate and long term impacts of the recommendations issued; the misinformation that has occurred through media and online media sources; and most importantly the need for financial relief to keep our tourism industry businesses open and operating.

There are more meetings scheduled today, Monday, August 23, and we have been asked to quantify the magnitude of the current situation. If you are able to provide us any information or feedback in the next 24 hours on the impact to your tourism business, it will enable us to have a very specific conversation with the government on the magnitude of the situation and the immediacy of the need.

You can provide information through TOTA's Voice Your Concerns form or by emailing Recovery@TOTABC.com.

- Michael J. Ballingall, TOTA Chair

Michael J. Ballingall

TOTA Board Chair