[TAS]

Yes, this is kind of like the C or D student arguing it is not worth the effort to become a B or A student. It becomes a self fulling situation.

The last time Edmonton made any serious effort to be a tourist destination was when a big mall was built here in the early 1980's. Of course that has little or no benefit for downtown.

Every since then we have been mostly resting on our laurels as meager as they are.

Well there's many types of tourism - sport tourism, concert tourism, summer festival tourism.

Explore Edmonton, which just received $11 million from the city, is another example of the city making a serious effort to bring major events to city and attract people to come here.

The major effort to bring World Cup here was another serious endeavour that could have had legacy benefits. Same for the effort to bring World Expo here.

 

[David A]

Yes, I agree there are different types of tourism and the $11 million does actually give me some hope that our city is becoming more serious about this.

However, unfortunately we haven't had much success getting big new events here in recent years with World Cup being an example.

Also we get big outdoor concerts because of stadium built in the 1970's and most our big summer festivals were started in the 1980's. They are good, but I feel we need to do more now than just rely on the tried and true.