Experience the Gulf Islands (ETGI)

Working collaboratively with the Capital Regional District and Southern Gulf Islands Community Economic SustainabilityCommission,EcoPlan helped develop Experience the Gulf Islands, a unique inter-island community tourism strategy for the Southern Gulf Islands (Galiano, Mayne, North and South Pender, Salt Spring, Saturna).  Designed to build on and support existing island tourism and community development initiatives, Experience the Gulf Islands Concept Plan represents an innovative, broader strategy that looks to coordinate and enhance community tourism planning across the region as whole (i.e., both the Salt Spring and Southern Gulf Islands Electoral Areas); the concept plan explicitly recognizes and seeks to realize the larger social, environmental, and economic contributions of community tourism, and looks to build an archipelago-wide mobility network and organization for developing the unique experience that is the Southern Gulf Islands.

Its development also provided an opportunity to further build and enrich the relationships and partnerships that are necessary to achieve the Plan’s vision, goals, and the preliminary strategy it outlines.The final plan included a guiding, shared, inter-island vision for the future of community tourism in the area, and community-defined and prioritized tourism development goals to help guide activities to achieve the inter-island tourism vision. The strategy component identified a series of short-, medium- and long-term actions organized under a range of strategy areas. An implementation section outlined the next steps required to move the Concept Plan forwards and has already resulted in several short-term, or quick start actions being completed.