BCBusiness

September/October 2020 – Making It Work

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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64 BCBUSINESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020 Bella Coola Heli Sports has a commercial heli-skiing tenure in the Coast Range that is roughly the size of Switzerland and owns historic Tweedsmuir Park Lodge, its main base of winter and summer operations. In winter, Steiner and his team also ski out of four other small satellite operations at pri- vately owned lodges throughout its domain. Steiner commends the Canada Emer- gency Wage Subsidy program, which cov- ers salaries up to 75 percent, a boost he says Bella Coola desperately needs to keep as many as 88 staff ready to welcome heli- skiers for a 2020-21 season that would typi- cally start in late December. If a second wave of COVID-19 strikes in the fall and interna- tional travel bans remain, it's all for naught. "With caseloads climbing in B.C. and Europe and the disaster unfolding in the U.S., I have to admit we are starting to lose faith because it does not look like borders will be opening anytime soon," Steiner says. (At press time, the federal government had extended its ban on non-essential travel from countries except the U.S. until Sep- tember 30.) Thankfully, he notes, Bella Coola has deep-pocketed investors who can weather a few lean seasons, and bookings from hopeful Europeans and Americans remain strong. But the company faces other unique challenges posed by the coronavirus pan- As Phase 3 of the provincial government's plan to reopen the B.C. economy unfolded in June, COVID-19 considerations were keeping Beat Steiner, co-owner and CEO of Bella Coola Heli Sports, awake at night. "It's pretty much all I've been thinking about," Steiner says from his home office in Whistler. No wonder he's worried. COVID hit many businesses hard, but it's left the future of heli-skiing and cat-skiing, a B.C.-born brand of high-end recreation that generated $213 million for local opera- tors last year, hanging in the balance. The pandemic is revealing cracks in the industry's business model, which for decades has relied on visitors from abroad. As long as the province remains closed to most international travel, Steiner and his competitors can forget about shuttling wealthy foreign skiers into the prov- ince's vast backcountry for a fix of powder snow. "We feel that we can safely keep our staff and guests separate from the local community. If travel bans are lifted but we can't operate because of local issues, that's another problem. We need some sort of mediation to help us through this. Right now, we're focused on the winter season" –Beat Steiner, co-owner and CEO, Bella Coola Heli Sports demic. During the early days of B.C.'s COVID lockdown in March, in an effort to protect its 900 members from the disease, the Nuxalk Nation opened an information checkpoint on Highway 20 urging non-residents and tourists to stay out of its traditional Bella Coola Valley. In May, the nation renewed calls for all non-essential travellers to keep away, forcing Bella Coola to suspend its sum- mer season of $1,000-plus-per-night bear viewing, heli-hiking and fly-fishing holidays. Steiner says maintaining a good relation- ship with the Nuxalk is crucial to his compa- ny's survival, and he understands why the local Indigenous community is cautious. He also thinks the B.C. government can do a bet- ter job explaining to rural communities that ERIC POULIN/BELLA COOLA HELI SPORTS

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