OLDS — Local businesses need a single coordinated list of events occurring in the community so they can prepare for a potential flood of customers, Coun. James Cummings said during a recent council meeting.
There is such a list: the community calendar on the Town of Olds' website, but not enough event coordinators are using it, chief administrative officer Brent Williams and community services director Doug Wagstaff said.
That issue came up when Wagstaff noted that a couple of recent sports tournaments brought lots of teams to town, filling up not only local hotels and motels, but those in other nearby communities.
“We noticed it right away when our volume of traffic in our business was so much larger and they were all wearing matching jackets,” coun. James Cummings said.
He said if restaurants and other businesses knew that a big tournament was coming to town on a certain date they could prepare better for an influx of customers.
Cummings suggested the town should coordinate its event promotion efforts with entities such as Olds College of Agriculture & Technology and Olds Regional Exhibition, both of which also bring lots of events to the community.
Wagstaff said the booking agent for the town does provide event coordinators with information on how they can promote their event on the community calendar.
“The groups that currently put on there do it religiously and it’s quite comprehensive for their events, but what we don’t yet have is the community taking that uptake and using that resource that’s there. So we are going to continue to promote that in different ways,” he said.
Williams echoed Wagstaff’s point.
He also agreed that perhaps more coordination could be done between the town, Olds College and the ORE regarding the promotion of events.
“For right now, our community calendar is that avenue. It does work quite well, but it is only as good as those people who choose to tell us their events or people who check that calendar as well,” Williams said.
Coun. Wanda Blatz pointed out that the town has a rep on the Olds & District Chamber of Commerce (Coun. Darren Wilson) who could promote the calendar.
“We do have a chamber representative. He might want to mention it at the next chamber meeting, that this is something they might want to jump on board with, because it is a great thing for tourism and economic development and economic benefit within our community,” she said.
