Tourism partners join forces to formulate plan.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Sault Ste. Marie - Searchmont Resort - Brief Article

Ian McMillan hardly had time to settle into his new job last month as the City of Sault Ste. Marie's director of tourism when community leaders sealed an 18th-hour deal to keep the struggling Searchmont Resort open this winter.

Since then it has been full-time scrambling in what McMillan calls "guerilla marketing mode" in getting the word out to skiers in their traditional U.S. Midwest tourism market that Searchmont's slopes will be ready for business.

A non-profit group, Searchmont Development Inc., will manage the resort after an agreement was struck in late September between community leaders, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and the court-appointed receiver BDO Dunwoody.

With a one-year agreement tucked away and armed with a $200,000 promotional budget, McMillan is dipping into a special market share program of money pooled from local hoteliers, the city and various agencies to keep the resort viable while the search continues for a new buyer.

Last season Searchmont enjoyed along and lustrous winter, luring more than 80,000 visitors including 45,000 out-of-province skiers, the latter figure McMillan believes is second only in Ontario to Blue Mountain. It was a 84 per cent jump from the year before.

"We're really jumping into this with both feet," says McMillan, who was a key pick-up for the tourism wing of the city's economic development corporation after holding previous positions with the Algoma Kinniwabi Travel Association and the Northern Tourism Marketing Company.

Besides trying to duplicate last season's on-the-slope success, he will be praying for a ton of snow.

"Everything we hear in the Farmer's Almanac is predicting a pretty heavy snow year," says McMillan. "What's critical is getting an early snow. If we get the mountain open by American Thanksgiving at the end of November, that'll be the big boom that carries through Christmas and New Year's week."

As a border community, the tourism sector has long been considered a principle local growth industry. Now the city and various community players have come to the table in making a substantial financial commitment to beef up staff at Tourism Sault Ste. Marie with McMillan's hiring and bolstering the department's marketing budget by 30 per cent.

Over the summer Tourism Sault Ste. Marie received a $100,000 injection from the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines with the city providing matching funding. Private...