Historic Hat Creek Ranch

BUSINESS STRATEGIC PLAN

PROJECT SUMMARY

A 5-year strategic plan to guide the business in developing product, enhance experiences, and elevate marketing. The strategy also needed to build relationships with neighbouring nations and the tourism industry, and turn the business into a sustainable, working ranch that benefits community and culture.

APPROACH

Secondary research

Community engagement

Industry engagement

Dialogic research

Pluk’wentwécw. An inclusive place of gathering.

The 2025–2030 Strategic Plan for Historic Hat Creek Ranch in Cache Creek, BC, is a blueprint for transformation—grounded in culture, guided by values, and built to serve both community, visitors, and families in lasting ways. Hat Creek is not just a destination; it’s a place where time, story, and land intersect. The strategy reflects that.

Developed through site visits, community gatherings, and consultation with leadership, staff, and tourism partners, the plan weaves together operational priorities with cultural intention. Framed around the medicine wheel, the strategy is structured across four core pillars: empowering community, elevating operations, growing visitor revenue, and developing infrastructure. Each is deeply rooted in the emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental well-being of the Ranch and communities it serve in all four directions.

It outlines how Hat Creek Ranch can become a year-round cultural hub, a working ranch focused on food sovereignty, and a model for Indigenous-led tourism. It includes bold infrastructure plans—from a powwow arbour to an expanded RV park and conference centre—and clear tactics to strengthen staff training, visitor experience, and financial sustainability.

Above all, the plan honours the dual Indigenous and settler histories of the site and the stories that have yet to be told. It’s not just about where Hat Creek Ranch is going—it’s about how it will get there, and who will come along the way. This is a strategy for renewal: one that reconnects people to the land, preserves knowledge, and builds a place of regeneration for future generations to gather, learn, and thrive.