“The infrastructure needs are great […] and I think the concept of redirecting some visitors to help support these sorts of things is a great idea whose time has come.”
— Brad Parsell
In the popular tourism destination of Načiks, or Tofino, British Columbia, visitor dollars are funding critical infrastructure. The small community on Vancouver Island’s west coast has committed $1.6 million of hotel tax revenue toward the debt servicing of a new $80 million wastewater treatment plant. This marks a major departure from how these funds are typically spent.
“Some people raised eyebrows,” says Brad Parsell, Executive Director of Tourism Tofino. “But 85% of our local businesses supported it. They saw the connection. If tourism contributes to the problem, then it needs to contribute to the solution.”
Tofino hosted more than 700,000 visitors in 2024, far outnumbering the 2,500 residents. It’s no surprise that so many are drawn here. The powerful allure of the landscape, and the sheer volume of visitors it attracts, underscores why tourism must also take responsibility for protecting the very systems it relies on, especially the water supply and sewage treatment. Until recently, raw sewage was discharged directly into local waters, which threatened marine life and traditional Indigenous food systems. “We were literally pumping untreated sewage into a UNESCO biosphere,” Brad says. “It was time to do better.”
This move reflects a growing shift in how destinations view tourism’s role in community wellbeing. Tofino’s approach is bold, but it is not alone. In Bend, Oregon, visitor dollars have helped support essential services like fire safety and housing. Mammoth Lakes, California is exploring ways to invest tourism revenue into wildfire resilience and climate adaptation. These examples show that tourism can be part of the solution when destinations align funding with community priorities.
Tofino’s leadership in sustainability will already be familiar to Travel Beyond listeners. The region has been featured in two seasons of the podcast. In a prior conversation, Brad shared how Indigenous values are helping guide destination strategy.
In this new episode, we revisit that philosophy through the lens of the ʔiisaak Pledge. Pronounced similar to “ee-sock,” ʔiisaak is a Nuu-chah-nulth word that means “to observe, to appreciate, and to act accordingly.” The pledge is a commitment visitors can take, based on four Tla-o-qui-aht teachings and laws. It encourages behaviours like staying on marked trails, protecting wildlife, conserving water, and learning from local Indigenous culture. Travellers can take the pledge online or in person at tourism touchpoints across the destination.
But the pledge is more than a list of suggested behaviours. It is an invitation to view travel differently. Rather than seeing travel as consumption, visitors are encouraged to see it as a relationship. As Brad puts it, “We’re not just managing tourism. We’re inviting people to be part of something much deeper — a shared responsibility to care for this place.”
Questions for your destination to consider
Tofino’s experience offers a real-world example of tourism aligning with Indigenous and community values. Here are three questions to ask as you reflect on your own destination:
- Is tourism activity straining the local infrastructure?
- How do local residents feel about how tourism gives back?
- How could tourism funding be directed to address impacts on infrastructure?
Show notes
→ Tourism Tofino
Learn more about Tofino’s travel experiences, stewardship initiatives, and visitor resources straight from the destination’s official site.
→ The ʔiisaak Pledge
Take the pledge online and learn how this Indigenous-led commitment to respectful travel supports both the environment and local First Nations communities.
→ BC’s MRDT Program
Find out how the Municipal and Regional District Tax functions in British Columbia and how it can be adapted to support community infrastructure.
Subscribe to Travel Beyond through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast player.
Episode transcript
Brad Parcell: The infrastructure need is great, so I think the concept of redirecting some visitor spend to help support these sorts of things is a great idea whose time has come. I think it’ll be up to the destination to decide what that looks like.
Peter McCully: Welcome to Travel Beyond. I’m Peter McCully for Destination Think. On this episode, we look at travel’s role in making a better world, and we highlight leading destinations and changemakers. Our guests are taking local action that the world can learn from. They’re helping to regenerate ecosystems, communities, and economies, and they’re often making positive change happen from the bottom up.
Many of the voices we’ve highlighted are part of the Destination Think Collective, a peer group of more than 20 ambitious, forward-thinking destinations working toward a better future for travel and the planet. As you heard at the top of the show, our topic is a great idea whose time has come. Tourism revenue collected through the hotel tax in Tofino, British Columbia, has contributed $1.6 million to a new large water treatment plant that opened in 2024.
Brad Parcell of Tourism Tofino says it was a controversial decision at the provincial level because this is an unusual way to use the hotel tax, but the Tofino community was overwhelmingly in support of doing just that. In the community, there was a sense that such a large water treatment facility costing $80 million would not be needed if there were not so many visitors to the area.
Brad Parcell has a radio show on the local community radio station, Tuff City Radio, called Tourism Talk. He speaks weekly with someone about how they ended up working in the tourism industry and what they’d like to see take place in the future. Tofino, British Columbia, has been featured on prior seasons of the Destination Think podcast.
The coastal landscape and cultural experiences make this a highly desired destination. Over 600,000 visitors arrive each year. As we’ve heard, local First Nations and allies have fought to protect and restore the natural environment in recent decades. The Iisaak Pledge comes from the Clayoquot First Nation and contains four teachings that have been passed down through generations.
And now, Tourism Tofino and Clayoquot First Nation are encouraging visitors to take the pledge when they visit and, along the way, learn something about the Clayoquot and Nuu-chah-nulth cultures. David Archer, editorial manager at Destination Think, spoke with Brad Parcell about the area’s residents and First Nations communities.
Brad Parcell: My name is Brad Parcell. I’ve had the great honour and responsibility of leading the team at Tourism Tofino as the executive director here for the last two and a half years. I’m coming to you from beautiful, sunny Clayoquot First Nation territory today. I would say folks know us for being one of the best surf breaks in North America and things of that nature.
But increasingly, the First Nations here are really becoming a force in tourism, and their presence is becoming more and more felt. There’s so much amazing, beautiful history and beautiful stories that are being shared. I’d say come for the beaches and the forest, but stay for the culture.
It’s a really special part of the world. What we now know as the town of Tofino is situated on the end of the Esowista Peninsula, which is Clayoquot First Nation territory. They’re one of 14 Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations on the west coast here, and Tofino acts as a jumping-off point to many other nations as well, particularly the Ahousaht First Nation and the Hesquiaht First Nation to the north, and to the south of us, there’s Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ and Toquaht First Nations, who are all doing interesting and exciting things in tourism as well. So we’re really becoming quite a force in terms of Indigenous-led stewardship and Indigenous-led tourism.
I think in terms of some of the settler folks that ended up out here, it’s a really eclectic place. We’re at the end of a very long and windy road, and so we have that kind of end-of-the-road culture. We have a history of activism, of people standing up to extractive natural resource industries like commercial logging and commercial fishing. So we have this spirit of realizing that this place is bigger than each of us and that everybody is connected. Everything is one, and we all need to band together to protect this place. So it’s quite an interesting cast of characters out here, and it’s really what makes this place special.
David Archer: Interesting characters, for sure. I was wondering if you can tell me a little about how Indigenous culture shows up in the travel experience around Tofino?
Brad Parcell: It’s honestly happening more and more. We have more market-ready Indigenous experiences here in Tofino than Vancouver does at the moment, so it’s really exploding, and there are all kinds of different ways it’s manifesting. Clayoquot First Nation owns a resort, Tin Wis, and an RV park and campground. Ahousaht First Nation has recently purchased a remote lodge that they’re planning to open next year. A couple of years ago, they bought Ocean Outfitters, a whale-watching company, and so they have Ahous Adventures. And I’m just picking a few—people who have listened to the podcast have heard from a bunch of people like Stevie from Fast Foods and Gordon from T-Bird E-Bikes. There are lots of really cool businesses, but what’s cooler than that for the visitor is that through those experiences, you get to see all the beautiful nature and all those sorts of things, but you’re really going deeper than that and being able to learn a bit about the culture and a bit about rights and title in this part of the world, and some of the many ways that Indigenous folks have actively participated in stewarding this area. So it’s really cool. You can do a whale-watching tour in many parts of the world, but to hear some songs or stories that are connected to whales in this part of the world from an Indigenous lens really just makes that experience so much richer.
David Archer: One of the guests that I spoke with said something to the effect that within the last five years, he had noticed a big increase in the sort of curiosity that people are bringing to Tofino and the Ucluelet area about Indigenous culture and First Nations, and also deeper background knowledge before they arrive. Have you noticed that as well, or what are you seeing from visitors?
Brad Parcell: Yes, for sure. And I think it’s been a joint effort between Clayoquot and Ahousaht especially, and folks like us at Tourism Tofino, of really trying to share that history and share some of that even before visitors get here as part of that trip-planning experience.
We launched a brand-new website, Tourism Tofino, last summer. Anyone who has built a website at that scale knows how much of a challenge that project is—it’s a lot of work. But the most exciting part of that project was the Indigenous consultation that we did and how we could weave culture and language all through the website, not just bolt on a page about Indigenous tourism and check a box and call it a day. It’s one of the biggest tools we have for folks planning a trip to come here, and so right out of the gate, before you even got in the car or got in a plane to come here, you’ve been exposed to some of the stories and some of the teachings and some of the language from the Indigenous folks out here. So we are feeling that—we’re feeling people are coming out here hungry to learn more about that part of this really beautiful place.
David Archer: That’s great. What’s one thing that you’d like visitors to learn from their trip to Tofino?
Brad Parcell: It’s really some of these Indigenous teachings and Indigenous laws that have been passed down for millennia that I think humans need now more than ever, frankly. Everything is connected. Everything is—humans don’t sit on top of the web of life; we’re a part of it, and we have a responsibility to uphold natural law. I think things like Iisaak, which is a really big teaching in Nuu-chah-nulth culture, loosely translates to respect. It’s probably more accurately translated as to observe, appreciate, and act accordingly.
And I think those concepts, when you really unpack them, are really about stewarding the lands and waters and stewarding the planet for future generations. I think there’s a lot that folks can learn from Tofino, from Indigenous folks, from the history here, the activism, and just, especially in these kinds of times, standing up for what’s important, standing up for the future, and standing up for the environment. So I think there are a lot of really beautiful things folks can take away or learn and take away from here and, hopefully, apply that to wherever folks are from in their own communities. I think it’s really powerful.
David Archer: There are so many big lessons in what you just said surrounding that idea of respect, or Iisaak, and I think we’ll get into more of that a little later. You mentioned the need to take care of the planet or to respect natural law, I think you said, so tourism has a responsibility to help that happen as well. I wanted to ask you about tourism activity into Tofino. How many visitors do you get? How much revenue does that bring? What’s the snapshot of the big picture?
Brad Parcell: Big picture, we’re a town of two and a half thousand people, give or take. In 2024, it was estimated we had about three-quarters of a million visitors, about 711,000 and change. And those visitors spent about $430 million directly in Tofino. So it has become a pretty massive industry for a pretty small place.
David Archer: Yes.
Brad Parcell: With that comes a lot of challenges and responsibility, frankly. Folks here have had a front-row seat—they’ve witnessed the devastation of things like really bad, unsustainable clear-cut logging that was happening a lot in the seventies and eighties. Folks saw that and the impact it was having on watersheds and salmon runs, and people really stood up.
There was almost a conscious decision in the eighties and nineties during some of the protests and the activism that went on out here against that extraction. It was very deliberate that we let go of some of those industries and we really embraced ecotourism. Tourism had this promise that it wasn’t going to be as exploitive or extractive for both the environment, the wildlife, and for the people who lived here.
Fast forward 20, 30, 40 years, now we have this massive tourism industry. I’m not entirely sure if we’ve lived up to that promise fully. Make no mistake, there are massive impacts still from our industry, from tourism, having that many people come to a place that’s relatively small. If you’re unfamiliar with Tofino, we’re a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water and by a National Park Reserve to the south, and so it puts pressure on different aspects of the community. We’re really cognizant of that, and we’re really trying to work with the residents, to work with the First Nations and other leaders in the community, first and foremost, around visitor education and setting some expectations, and then around what are some of the other things we can do to mitigate the impacts.
But the Nuu-chah-nulth nations out here have been welcoming visitors for thousands of years, way before European contact. The ocean out here was like the Pacific Highway—canoes and lots of trade and cultural exchanges going on. And back in those times, there were protocols. When you were invited into a territory, you were expected to abide by the natural laws and protocols of, in this case, the Clayoquot First Nation. So we’ve taken that very old concept, and we’re trying to reimagine it in this modern tourism context where we ask people to respect the natural laws and protocols of this place.
David Archer: There are two layers to the responsibility here that you mentioned. Visitor education is part of that, and then there’s also the more systemic sort of background—not only the mindset we bring to it, but the actual infrastructure itself. And before the call, you’d mentioned Tourism Tofino has used a portion of the hotel tax to fund a new wastewater treatment plant, and that’s a surprising piece of news. Tell me about why you’re investing in water treatment.
Brad Parcell: Until last year, we didn’t have a wastewater treatment plant in this part of the world. Put two and two together—we were literally pumping untreated raw sewage into the Clayoquot Tribal Parks, which are a UNESCO-designated biosphere region that are ecologically sensitive. That’s had a huge impact on clam gardens and eelgrass beds and some of the traditional foods that the nations out here are used to eating. It’s been identified as a problem in Tofino for decades, but it’s one of those big, hairy problems that’s very expensive to solve.
We only have 2,500 people paying tax here, so how are we going to foot the bill for a piece of infrastructure that ended up being somewhere in the ballpark of $80 million? This was before my time, but there was this growing idea that we wouldn’t need a wastewater treatment plant as big a capacity if we didn’t have a tourism economy. We have about a thousand commercial hotel rooms and about 320 short-term rentals. They all have flushing toilets. The concept that the total cost of this project shouldn’t be borne by the residents of Tofino was incredibly well supported. So folks started looking for other ways that potentially tourism could contribute in some way to this piece of infrastructure.
Where we landed was the hotel tax. I think, first of all, that hotel tax we have in British Columbia is the envy of a lot of other jurisdictions around the world. It’s a really, in my opinion, world-class funding mechanism. It’s really—when people say, “Oh, tourism, why are we footing the bill for all of this?”—it’s really nice to say the resident doesn’t pay for anything tourism does. It’s the visitor through the hotel tax. Our marketing, our visitor services program, our destination stewardship program—the visitor pays for it.
But the destination organizations in British Columbia who receive that tax are fairly protective of it, for obvious reasons. If every municipality around the province started tapping into that money, it would very quickly dilute the original intended purpose for that pot of money. In certain quarters, it was a controversial decision to tap into that pot of money, but it got voted through by the community. And so we are—by the end of next year, we will have contributed, or the visitor to Tofino will have contributed, $1.6 million towards the debt servicing on this critically needed piece of infrastructure.
And we recently did a survey of all the businesses in Tofino. I think we had about 132 businesses respond to that survey, and 85% of the businesses in Tofino support the idea of some of that hotel tax going towards at least water treatment. So the infrastructure need is great, and so I think the concept of redirecting some visitor spend to help support these sorts of things is a great idea whose time has come. I think it’ll be up to the destination to decide what that looks like, the mechanics of that. But the concept is essential. I think there’s really no other way for a place like Tofino to pay for these things unless tourism contributes at least a little bit.
David Archer: Absolutely. A few of my guests from last season had mentioned the water supply as well, and I noticed some signs around town, too, about potential water restrictions and that sort of thing. Is that a pretty active conversation?
Brad Parcell: Oh yes, and Tofino’s not alone in that. I’m not here to point fingers, but the objective reality of the history of Tofino is that we’re building all of these hotel rooms and we’re building all of this tourism infrastructure, but we didn’t really think too deeply about the impact that was going to have on water and sewer and roads and things like that, and the housing that would be needed for the workforce to support that development.
Water has emerged as probably one of our biggest challenges in terms of infrastructure. In 2021, in this part of the world, we had a sort of once-in-a-hundred-year drought, and it put a lot of pressure on our water system. The drinking water in Tofino is collected from Meares Island across the harbour, and it’s all creeks, so it’s all surface water that ends up in a creek. And then there are a few dams over there, and it’s piped by a submarine pipe. So when we have that really bad drought, the creeks started to dry up. And to be clear, Tofino only has a water problem four weeks of the year—late August, early September. The rest of the year, we have all the water we would ever need.
David Archer: I learned also that that water supply, the current one, comes from Meares Island, which is the place that was protected by the tribal park declaration in the eighties, and the battles over that were led largely by Indigenous folks.
Brad Parcell: Yes, and there’s this—that’s the story of this place all coming together. The busiest four weeks of the year are the same four weeks of the year where we have water issues. We wouldn’t even have a tourism economy, as you rightly point out, if it wasn’t for the First Nations and other allies standing up and protecting the forests from Meares Island. If it was clear-cut, we wouldn’t have that water source.
It’s not intuitive for folks who visit here—we’re one of the rainiest places in Canada, and yet we have a water problem. That’s not an easy thing for people to wrap their heads around. So we’ve had to go film—a crew actually shot and produced a video sort of explaining where the drinking water comes from and why, in the summer, we have water issues.
David Archer: If you’re not used to living in the rainforest, it’s hard to tell how healthy the rainforest is? You don’t necessarily know what the rainiest season or the dry season looks like. It’s not a visible drought all the time.
Brad Parcell: Totally. But we certainly heard from First Nations guardians who spend a lot of time out in the forest and on the land just how dry—people were saying that they’d never seen the forest that dry in their whole life. We asked the businesses about some of these challenges, and 91% of the businesses in Tofino agree with the idea that we have to come together as a community and try to solve this water problem. It’s really hard for us to imagine a future together without having this problem solved.
David Archer: Do you imagine that Tourism Tofino will contribute funds to a potential solution down the line, or is that part of the conversation?
Brad Parcell: Potentially. Again, I think regenerative tourism is just the latest buzzword that’s been thrown around our industry, but to me, what it really means is creating opportunities for people who love these places to give back to the places that they’re visiting. Maybe this time it’s not the hotel tax—maybe it’s a different mechanism—but I think there has to be, somewhere in that conversation, pulling on that same concept that we used for the wastewater treatment plant: How can we direct a portion of visitor spend towards this piece of infrastructure? So that’s a live conversation that I guess we’ll see where that goes.
David Archer: That’ll be interesting to watch. Let’s talk about respectful travel. How do you start to think about the concept of respect when it comes to tourism in Tofino, whether that’s environmental or cultural?
Brad Parcell: It’s interesting. We’ve been working on a destination stewardship plan for Tofino, which is a 50-year, multi-generational vision about where we would like our industry to go, and that’s being fed by the community. One of the “aha” moments so far in this project—and we hope to publish that plan towards the end of the year—is what we’re starting to realize: the values, things like respect, respecting residents, respecting the environment, respecting the infrastructure, are very important values for the residents of Tofino.
And then you look at something like the Iisaak Pledge, based around this Nuu-chah-nulth concept of Iisaak and respect. These are teachings that have been passed down for generations. That classic—you put the two on top of each other, and they’re exactly the same. The residents of Tofino are articulating the values that are articulated in the Iisaak Pledge and in those teachings. I think for us, that was a huge light bulb moment where it’s, “Oh, I see. It’s not an us and them or this part of the community and that part of the community. Actually, everyone’s completely united on this idea that, whatever that looks like, we need to foster a respectful visitor economy here in Tofino,” something that, exactly like you said, respects natural law and Indigenous protocol, the residents, the people who call this place home, that respects the wildlife and environment and the really sensitive ecological systems we have out here.
It’s becoming a huge part of how we talk about our industry. It’s becoming a huge part of Tourism Tofino and potentially even our brand and the way we talk about this place to visitors. I think it really ties a lot of things together for us, and again, I think it’s one of those teachings that is universal and that if folks can get behind it here in Tofino, they can take that home with them and implement it in their lives as well.
David Archer: What’s one thing you want travellers to take away from this story or this idea?
Brad Parcell: I think sometimes when we’re talking about the future of tourism and travel and regenerative tourism, sustainable tourism, however you want to frame it, it’s easy to lose sight of the actual visitor experience and why the visitor’s coming and what they’re taking away from that experience.
There are a lot of destinations all over the world doing responsible visitor messaging and trying to relay the values of their destination and trying to get some alignment with the visitors who come here. There are different ways to do that—shock-and-awe campaigns that show you trash all over a campsite or a bear ripping a bin apart, or people make light of it or have funny, silly ways to poke fun at it. We’ve been trying to find the tone here in Tofino about how do we put across some of these things without being condescending and patronizing and without making fun of it. These are serious things.
The Iisaak Pledge is really an invitation to learn. It’s an invitation to change behaviour and align values, but in there is just so much rich stuff about how you could live your life and some really thought-provoking, in my opinion, teachings about how you conduct yourself anywhere in this world and in this life.
So for me, it’s hopefully the visitor is hearing the message, whatever that is—don’t let your dog run around on the beaches off-leash because we have shorebirds that are there, or there are all these kinds of little examples of how you could live up to the pledge. But I think centering it in that really rich, beautiful culture is, hopefully, what gives people pause, and it’s more than just the “don’t do this, don’t do that.” It’s an invitation to live a more beautiful and connected life.
David Archer: As we wrap up, is there anything else that you’d like to say to the travel industry or to other destinations that you’d like to pass on?
Brad Parcell: I think I’m incredibly passionate about working with the First Peoples of the destination, and I’m passionate about it because it’s the right thing to do, but I’m passionate about it because you can’t really go wrong, I think, if you’re working in harmony with First Peoples, according to their sort of vision of their territory. If you’re letting them lead—we talk a lot about truth and reconciliation in Canada and especially in the Canadian tourism industry, and it looks nice on a slide, and it’s all nice platitudes of people saying the right things, but I still don’t really see the rubber hitting the road as much as I’d like to, if I’m honest with you.
I think it makes a richer visitor experience. Just the Indigenous worldview, just writ large, is just so focused on people and planet first over things like profits. I think we all have a lot to learn from all kinds of Indigenous worldviews. Getting to know some of these folks out here and working with them has—I’m not being hyperbolic here—changed my life. It’s changed my worldview and how I think about my career and my work in tourism, how I think about how I live my life. That’s travel at its best, right? It’s transformational—it changes you, it touches you, you are different because of the experience. That’s the sort of travel industry I’m looking to be a part of.
David Archer: That’s the perfect note to end on. Thanks so much for being generous with your time and your knowledge. I appreciate this. Thanks, Brad.
Brad Parcell: Thanks so much, David.
Peter McCully: This has been Travel Beyond, presented by Destination Think. Our thanks to Brad Parcell from Tourism Tofino. To learn more about the Iisaak Pledge, you can visit tourismtofino.com. For more resources and show notes, visit our website at destinationthink.com.
This episode was co-hosted and co-produced by myself, Peter McCully. David Archer hosted the interview and composed the theme music. Sara Raymond de Booy is co-producer. Lindsay Payne and Cory Price provided production support.
If you like what you hear, please take a moment to give us a five-star rating. It helps more people find the show. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back with more next week.
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