About Kate Colley
Operator, Advisor, Strategist
Kate has worked with destinations, resorts, hotels, restaurants, wineries and hospitality brands of every kind. Her experience covers media relations, campaigns and brand strategy, but the work she values most sits underneath the communications.
She can walk into a property, conduct a Forbes Five-Star-style quality audit and identify the gaps between the brand promise and the actual guest experience. She helps leadership understand what needs to change operationally before better marketing can make a difference.
From 2019 to 2023, Kate co-owned and operated Naramata Inn with Ned Bell. They reopened the 1907 heritage property during a global pandemic and helped build it into a nationally recognized destination. Restaurant revenue tripled from $1 million to $3 million, the Inn welcomed 128,000 guests and it was named among Condé Nast Traveler’s Top 15 Hotels in Western Canada.
Kate also served as President of Discover Naramata, leading a full destination rebrand with Rethink. Running a real hospitality business gave her direct experience with P&L, staffing, operations and the daily consequences of strategic decisions. She knows what good ideas cost and what it takes to make them work.
Her fractional leadership and consulting clients have included Pomeroy Resorts, Westin Bear Mountain and EDITION Hotels. She provides senior communications and marketing direction to organizations that need experienced leadership without adding a full-time executive.
Kate also brings more than two decades of wine-industry experience, including senior media relations work for Constellation Brands and Arterra Wines Canada’s Western VQA estates, along with longstanding relationships throughout the Okanagan.
Kate Colley
Kate Colley has spent close to 30 years learning how hospitality and tourism businesses actually work, from the inside, at every level and across almost every format the industry offers.
The Foundation
She began at Tourism Vancouver, where she helped launch Dine Out Vancouver Festival. It is now Canada’s largest dining event and still going more than two decades later. Her work included international media relations in the lead-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Kate then spent ten years as Director of Communications for Four Seasons Hotels Vancouver and Whistler. She led international campaigns, earned multiple Four Seasons Americas Pinnacle Awards and learned what it takes to represent one of the world’s most exacting hotel brands.
She also learned what communications looks like when things go wrong. Across her career, she has handled public-health emergencies, bedbug headlines, labour disputes, wildfires, hotel closures and a global pandemic. Nothing tests a strategy faster than a real crisis.
The Right Work
In 2025, Kate led a high-stakes, multidisciplinary program for host property Pomeroy Kananaskis Mountain Lodge during Canada’s G7 Leaders’ Summit.
She served as the property’s acting on-site communications and crisis lead with world leaders present. She led the build of the Explore Kananaskis Discovery Library for more than 500 international journalists, coordinated with Global Affairs Canada and the RCMP, and brought Kananaskis into the Banff International Media Centre through an information booth and live guest experience.
The summit generated more than 86,000 media stories across over 20 countries, with an estimated media value of $1.6 billion. The project brought together the kind of work Kate does best: senior judgment, calm crisis leadership, destination strategy, guest experience and hands-on execution.
Kate and Ned’s work also has a way of building on itself. A food-systems engagement informs a tourism strategy. A chef relationship opens a government door. A destination rebrand connects to a culinary brand. Together and separately, they bring a network and perspective built across hospitality, tourism and food systems. They are not simply consultants. They are connectors.
At this point in her career, Kate is selective about what she takes on. Great work requires real attention, and attention is finite. She is looking for two to five projects a year that fit what she knows, deserve to be done properly and involve people who are good to work with.