Business Outlook Survey Results

The Kelowna Chamber of Commerce partnered with MNP LLP to survey Chamber members about their business performance, business confidence and and specific factors related to doing business in Kelowna.

The survey was conducted by PRA Inc. under the guidance of MNP and the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce. Telephone interviews to 200 Business Leaders based off a list of 1200 Chamber Members from all industry sectors in Kelowna were conducted between January 28th & February 11th, 2014.


General Overview of Results:

- overall positive about where local economy is headed

- 60% of respondents have been affected by the economic situation by a slow down in business, lower sales, consumers have less money to spend
- 48% of respondents believe that Kelowna economy has not recovered from the recession. In a similar MNP survey from 2010, 74% of respondents believed Kelowna had not recovered from the recession. (this is an improvement of 26% for 2014)
- 52% of respondents have not made capital investments into their business & 59% have not changed their number of employees in the last 12 months.
- 75% of respondents expect their company to be performing better in 2014
- Greatest challenges facing businesses are: growth & profitability, hiring/retaining good staff, competition, uncertain economic climate and challenges ahead


Survey Overview:

Financial performance and business challenges (see above section)
Attitude on Government Performance
Workforce Challenges


Attitude on Government Performance:

- Over 70% of respondents feel that all levels of government; Federal, Provincial & Municipal are doing an acceptable (fair to good) job of creating a good climate for business in Kelowna and believe that British Columbia's business climate is competitive with other provinces.
- What is the one thing you would tell the City of Kelowna to do to improve the business climate - top response %19 said just continue to do what you're doing.
- The top 3 industries for future economic development in B.C. were identified as tourism at 64% as well as Information technology & energy.


Workforce Challenges

- 59% of organizations are conducting strategic business & staff planning this year
- 44% of organizations will be implementing succession planning to plan for their future staffing requirements
- over 60% of respondents will be expanding job responsibilities and cross-training employees to meet growth requirements.