ASSOCIATION PROFILE: Council of Tourism Associations (COTA)
Interview with Stephen Regan, President & CEO
by Debbie Minke

Q: As of October 1, you have been working as the new President and CEO of COTA. What special skills or experience are you bringing to the association?
I see myself not so much as the association’s CEO, rather as a CCO, or chief catalytic officer. My aim is to help unify and connect a diverse and dynamic industry, to provide leadership in exploring strategic opportunities. I bring over a dozen years of association experience to COTA, as well as a fresh perspective combined with the focus, energy, and attitude that COTA can be the best tourism industry association in the world. 

Q: What are your goals in your role as president of COTA?
I have 3 main goals: Firstly, I want to help the association know itself. All members need to know our core principles and their underlying values.. We are drawing upon the foundation created by many leaders over the past ten years as well as the strategic visioning process recently completed called ‘The Foresight Project’. Foresight consultations and debates conducted with all stakeholders in BC’s tourism community uncovered three guiding principles: Leadership, Unity, and Cooperation - what we are now calling the LUC factor. These principles are supported by values related to trust, respect, honesty, acceptance of diversity, and a recognition that developing tourism is a disciplined process - not a series of quick fixes or a continual effort to harvest only the low hanging fruit. 

My second goal, along with COTA’s Chair Jim Storie, is to attract the very best people to COTA, both at the staff and board levels. These individuals ideally embody and exemplify the values and standards of the association, are collaborative, respectful of other perspectives, self motivated, and self disciplined. They will be recognized professionals and leaders seeking only what is in the best interest of BC’s tourism community. 
Thirdly, the Chair and I want to be accessible. We recognize that the best communication is upward, from the grass-roots, from our operators and front-line staff up to the folks responsible for decision-making. We will facilitate input from all members and stakeholders, celebrating successes and developing deep insights into our opportunities and challenges. We will respect and honour the truly good ideas that come from people closest to the action. To this end, Jim and I have been working together in outreach mode since I started, travelling all over the province, listening to tourism operators and gaining insight from them. Outreach leads to engagement, then action.

Q: What is COTA’s role in the tourism sector?
COTA’s role is to respect the interests of each segment of the tourism industry, providing a forum for understanding issues and fostering cooperation. There’s a lot happening in BC already, with associations such as BCHA representing the interests of its members to government and government advancing aggressive goals through its Action Plan. We are paying attention to how the entire tourism system is working in our province. Where there are barriers to tourism development we are offering collaborative advocacy to give a stronger voice to our members. It is counter-intuitive, but in order to be an effective and unifying voice for tourism, COTA believes its primary role is to be the ears of tourism, always listening to our members and gaining deeper insights.

Q: What important provincial concerns have you identified from your discussions with hotel operators in BC?
There is a strong desire to see tourism sectors unified and effectively cooperating to ensure continued growth and success. We’ve heard this is critical to our collective success. Within this broader view, however, we strategically respond to challenges as they arise. Property assessment rates, for example, have been an issue of great concern, especially for those lodges and small operators who are being taxed on best and highest use of land, but whose business models don’t support these huge increases. We are actively working on implementing a Memorandum of Understanding with BC Assessment Authority.
While the BCHA and other BC-based tourism associations are capable of advancing their own advocacy agendas, COTA helps amplify and target our collective advocacy voice on large and small issues both at the provincial and federal levels. 

Q: What are the most pressing federal and provincial issues COTA is addressing?
On the federal level, we are pursuing more “Blue Sky” agreements with all of BC’s priority tourism markets. There has been some recent movement federally on this issue, but not nearly enough yet. Borders and access, especially from the US, is a major barrier we are addressing. Documentation requirements and long wait times are discouraging American tourists from visiting BC. The suspension of the Visitor Rebate Program has also dealt a hard blow to the BC tourism industry. We are investigating how to get maximum advantage with the current program while lobbying government through our national advocacy association to re-introduce the GST rebate provisions.
Provincially, we are supporting the human resources organization go2 both directly and indirectly. The labour shortage is a huge area of concern for all operators. We need better outcomes and less red tape to enable foreign workers to fill our needs.