President’s Report, September 2022
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PRESIDENT’S REPORT to ABOT QGM
September 15, 2022
We have had a busy summer season, with the Visitor Information Centre in full operation since the end of May. Our accommodations operators are reporting full or almost full capacity—mostly from visitors from Nova Scotia and the rest of the Maritimes.
Community Placemaking / Thriving Communities Project
Our most exciting development is that in late April, in partnership with the Annapolis Farmer’s and Traders Market, we began participating in a Thriving Communities placemaking project with the Town, AIRO and the Annapolis Farmer and Traders Market. The first meeting was a workshop held on June 27th that brought all the partners together to get the process rolling.
We have just received a report from that meeting and a core Project Team of 2 people from each partner is about to be formed. They will start implementing the first “quick wins” to begin to improve Market Square and areas near the Wharf for both local people and visitors.
VIC Operations
Lori Ann Edwards replaced Hope Mullen as VIC Manager a few weeks into the season. She has been our end of season VIC tourism Counsellor for a number of years and has been doing an excellent job of keeping things running well at the VIC. Our student travel counsellors did an excellent job during the season. They have now returned to school and have told us they are interested in returning next year.
We were not able to hire a third student due to the labour shortages being experienced across Canada. The two we had, Alisha Longmire and Emily Crocker did an excellent job during a fairly busy season. We thank them for their excellent efforts.
Lori Ann Edwards will work through the rest of the season which ends on Thanksgiving Monday. She will have help from new hire, Les Smith, who is a former VIC travel counsellor and was formerly the Tour Manager at the Tidal Power Station. We are also very grateful to the Town of Annapolis Royal for their in-kind support in providing us with our VIC space at the Comfort Station at 24 Drury Lane.
ABOT Administration / Social Media Support
We have hired Patty Comeau to take over our Admin support role, replacing Tara Irwin, who left to manage her business full time. Patty has good admin, social media, writing and website management skills which will be a great help to the Board of Trade.
News You Can Use
We continue to collect and send out a variety of business, educational and Covid-safety updates from government. We also send out items from Annapolis Investment in Rural Opportunities (AIRO), the Atlantic Chamber, and other business information, education and tourism organizations that are of use to our members.
Make sure you’re receiving this useful newsletter. And if you’re not, let us know by emailing admin@tradeannapolis.com. We also post every issue of News You Can Use to our ABOT Facebook page, so you can follow that to stay up to date.
Business Expo
We have regretfully decided to postpone of Business Expo until at least next Spring. We did not have enough volunteers available early enough in the season to organize it in time for Small Business week in October.
Painted Chair Fundraiser
Our Council member, Julia Redgrave, again donated her considerable artistic talent to produce a wonderful chair for our annual Painted Chair Fundraiser. We had the 2022 chair on display at the VIC so people can see it before buying their raffle tickets. This year we offered both paper and online tickets through Rafflebox and raised $500, slightly better than the $435 we raised last year.
New Member Recruiting and Board Positions
We are in need of more new members who are willing to take an active role in both ABOT project Teams and on elected Council positions, including Executive roles. We are currently down 2 Council positions and must do some active recruitment over the coming months to ensure we have a full roster of elected ABOT Council Members by our AGM in March 2023.
We are aware that other small volunteer Boards are experiencing the same shortage of volunteers and it is becoming a big concern. We are counting on our new Member Outreach Project Team to attract some great new members.
Strategic and Annual Plan Update
It is time to begin the process of updating our 3-year strategic plan and the annual work plan that goes with it. This Fall we will be developing a process to seek input from our members to inform that plan. And then we will be updating it from that input. And we are aware we will need to base our goals on our capacity to fulfill them. This can only happen through the efforts of dedicated volunteers who are willing to come forward and contribute their time and experience on our behalf.
I encourage any ABOT member who is interested in getting involved to contact me or any Council member. Let us hear your thoughts on what you want the Board of Trade to be and how you could become more involved.
In conclusion, the ABOT Council looks forward to continuing our work on behalf of our members in the coming year. And we hope that 2022 will see steadily improving business conditions for everyone. I want to thank the current ABOT Council members and project team members for their hard work on our behalf of our membership in the past months.
I wish you and your families all the best for the rest of 2022.
Charles Stewart,
President
