When you walk in the front door of Monashee Adventure Tours in downtown Kelowna, you see a counter, a computer and a long-haired guy sitting behind a desk.

Which is what you’d expect to find in the headquarters of an adventure tour company – anywhere.

But when you look left, you see a slot-car track and a wall full of model cars, racing helmets and other collectibles for sale. Welcome to Ed Kruger’s new world of business – after the Okanagan Mountain fire.

“Some things you can’t plan for in your business plan – that’s for sure,” said Kruger. “You put 10 years in your business and all of a sudden nature comes along and pulls the mat out from underneath you. You learn to adjust.”

Monte Stewart, Business Edge
Tour operator Ed Kruger decided to diversify his business after the Okanagan Mountain fire.

As the summer peak season approaches, he is one of many tourism operators and organizations adjusting operations following the fire. Business operators are also trying to send a simple message.

“We’re still open for business – there’s still lots to do here,” said Kruger.

In addition to owning and operating Monashee, Kruger now owns and operates Apex Memorabilia. A big NASCAR auto racing fan, he decided to diversify after last September’s blaze destroyed many of the historic trestles around the Kettle Valley Railway (KVR) area, where he conducts most of his cycling tours.

“I did about half of what I do normally, after the fire and back-country closure,” said Kruger, 42, who was born and raised in Kelowna.

Monashee’s revenue during the peak summer season dropped to $45,000 from $100,000. Kruger maxed out a $60,000 line of credit and the business barely made it through the winter, when he conducts less-lucrative snowshoe tours, on a $4,000 fire-recovery grant from the B.C. government.

“Last year, I was just to the point of paying off some of my bills for the year and then the closure happened, so the profit months were completely gone,” said Kruger. “Usually, those are the months that I bank a bit of money to sustain me through the winter.”

Fire-ravaged Myra Canyon once accounted for 90 per cent of his tour business in the summer months.

“The trail is actually 600 kilometres long. We only lost a 12-kilometre section of Myra. Actually, my longer-trip bookings are way down this year because everybody thinks the KVR is shut down. It’s just that one of the more pristine portions is.”

But a new project might help him offset the revenue shortfall – a fire-recovery tour in the area where only black tree trunks remain, along with several new homes now under construction.

“That’s been huge,” said Kruger. “That’s been very popular.”

With 2,000 truckloads of burned timber removed, there are many new vistas.

“The lake views are unbelievable now,” said Kruger. “It’s kind of shocking. I’ve been up there for 30 years enjoying the trail. You got into this little forested area and it would be quite a while before you got to see anything. Well, now you’ve got massive lake views.”

The fire also helped him, he said, because two competitors closed shop. After operating primarily around Kelowna, he has expanded his tours east to Vernon and south to Oliver.

“I don’t think it’s going to take me five years to get up to making money like it did when I first started my business,” said Kruger. “I figure a year or two and I’ll be back on top again. I’ve always been one to suck it up and keep going.”

So are other tour, hotel and vacation operators, said Nancy Cameron, general manager of Tourism Kelowna.

“We’re really trying to get out that positive reinforcement that the fire no longer is a factor for the people planning their vacation,” said Cameron. “Everything that they remember of Kelowna, everything that they think of Kelowna still exists.”

After the fire struck last September, Tourism Kelowna’s visitor centre experienced a 47- per-cent drop in visits from the same week in 2002.

“Tourists stopped coming,” said Cameron. “Those that were here during the fire stayed, for the most part, until their vacation was over, but no new visitors came in. That really significantly affected our attractions, because they were all still open.”

So far this year, hotel reservations are inconsistent, because travellers are booking later and closer to their vacation date, which is a trend throughout Canada, said Cameron. But nobody is raising any red flags yet about lower revenue.

Tourism Kelowna commissioned a survey of residents in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver to determine whether the fire affected people’s decisions to travel to the Okanagan city. The results showed they were still willing to come to Kelowna, and as a result, tourism company operators are “cautiously optimistic” that it will be business as usual this summer, Cameron said.

“We feel that we’re past the fire and that we’re looking to resume the normal tourism industry.”

But the tourism industry is still in damage-control mode. Early in the year, Tourism Kelowna tried to send the message that the city is still known for its reds, as in wine; whites, as in snow for skiing; and golf greens.

Now the agency is promoting great Okanagan getaways. It’s trying to lure travel writers to the area to provide a “credible, first-hand view” of Kelowna as a destination.

“One of our significant challenges was to try and mitigate the visuals that people saw on the news for two weeks straight and put that in balance,” said Cameron. “That’s not to be insensitive to the people who lost their homes . . . But we need to balance what people’s impressions were at the time – the city burning down – with the reality.”

The experience, said Cameron, taught the organization that it needs to have a crisis-management plan in place.

“From a business perspective, (the lesson) was to be accurate with all of the information that we’re providing,” said Cameron.

“Certainly, we weren’t the experts on the fire. Our first and foremost goal was to ensure that the visitors that were here were safe and had good information. And to make sure that the visitors that were on their way understood the information and knew about the road closures, airport access, and air quality – those kinds of issues.

“So it was very important to be accurate, truthful and completely not misleading.

“We wanted to make sure people understood, during the crisis, what they were going to experience. And then afterwards, we learned that you have to get out there with just good, positive rebuilding.”

Kelowna’s image rebuilders face the possibility of another severe fire in the B.C. Interior this summer.

The province is warning that the threat of flames in the Interior remains high again this year.

“Hopefully, lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place,” said Cameron, referring to the cause of the fire.

According to a report completed for the B.C. government by former Manitoba premier Gary Filmon, a civil engineer by profession, last year’s fires cost $700 million in damages.

Key recommendations for reducing fuel buildup in the province’s forests included fuel-treatment pilot projects in locations where urban centres and forests meet; onsite removal or burning of spacing slash to mitigate the surface fuel hazard; assessment of fire-prone ecosystems near urban centres; and training of more professionals who can implement a forest fuel-reduction program while meeting complex ecological, social and economic constraints.

Cameron believes that the heightened awareness will help prevent fires in the future and prompt tourism operators to provide better services. Kruger believes that “nature does things for a reason” and the publicity created by the fires will spark more interest in Kelowna.

“In a lot of ways, it did put us on the map,” said Kruger. “A lot of people didn’t know about Kelowna. Now they do.”