by Jim Byers
Last updated: 10:01 PM ET, Mon September 7, 2020
This week's Travel and Leisure Show is a great opportunity for Canadian tourism officials to reach out to the country's travel agents and advisors, says the new head of Destination Canada.
In an interview with TravelPulse Canada, new Destination Canada President and CEO Marsha Walden said her organization is thrilled to be part of the show, which runs Thursday, Sept. 10 for the travel trade and then again on Saturday, Sept. 12 for consumers/media.
The show will feature some of the top travel companies in the country and the best-known destinations, allowing agents and consumers both to gather tremendous information from airlines, hotel groups, tour operators and more so they can plan future trips.
Among those taking part are Tourism Vancouver, Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc., Aeroplan, the Italian National Tourist Board, Banff and Lake Louise Tourism, Sunwing Travel Group, Avalon Waterways, the Jamaica Tourist Board, Destination Ontario, The Travel Agent Next Door, Atout France and Bahia Principe Hotels and Resorts.
The Globe and Mail and Air Canada are presenting sponsors.
Attendees can chat live one-on-one with some of Canada's most notable travel companies. You can collect flyers, special offers and destination information in your own, private, virtual file case and take it with you when you leave.
Best of all, it's free.
"We're very supportive of anything that's putting travel back in the minds of Canadians and inviting them to explore more of their own country," Walden said. "There's so much to see and do in our own country.
"This is a great opportunity we think to not only help travel consultants understand more about their own domestic market but also talk to 20,000 Canadians about potential things to explore or put on their to-do list for the next few months and on into 2021. We're very pleased to be part of that.
"It's even better that (Economic Development and Official Languages) Minister Melanie Joly will be there to set the stage, and we look forward to being able to showcase so many great things in our country."
Walden said Canada is full of surprises.
"Every time I go someplace new. I'm just gobsmacked by the beauty and the cultural experiences that are available to us.
"We don't often think about how people come from all over the world to do road trips in our country; to drive through the Rockies, to drive from Montreal to Gaspesie. Those are incredible experiences that people around the world want to come here for and many of us haven't done them ourselves."
Destination Canada has traditionally marketed Canada to the world. But in these days of COVID-19 quarantines and travel restrictions, the organization has pivoted and is trying to get Canadians to explore their own country.
Walden was appointed President and CEO in August, replacing interim chief David Robinson, who took over when David Goldstein left the top DC post.
Walden said keys to the job include trying to understand how to jumpstart the country's devastated tourism and travel economy.
"It's probably no surprise to you that we stand to face as much as 60% of our industry either permanently or temporarily closing in 2020. That's a devastating loss for jobs, and for the livelihood of entrepreneurs and business.
"It's a catastrophic situation," said Walden, who spent nearly seven years as the head of Destination British Columbia, which is charged with bringing visitors to B.C. "We're expecting that, given the current sentiments we're hearing from health authorities, it looks like the borders won't be opening any time soon. We're expecting we won't be able to recover until probably close to 2024."
As well as trying to help get the industry back on its feet, Walden said Destination Canada will be facing an "incredibly, ferociously competitive" situation when they do get back to marketing Canada around the world, with just about every major tourist destination in the world desperately clamouring for business.
"Certainly, we're excellent marketers, and we need to be even more effective in a digital space going forward to use the data that we have to be more strategic. Secondly, on the development side, that's about building long-term competitiveness to have the right product that continues to attract the world's visitors, and to continue to work with governments across the many areas that impact tourism."
Walden said there aren't many industries that have to deal with 15 or 20 different areas of government in order to get policy that supports their business. But that is the case with travel and tourism.
"There's transportation and labour, there's border configurations; all of those things have tremendous impacts on tourism, and we need to have good policy in all those areas that support the visitor economy."
Asked if governments in Canada understand the impact that tourism has on the nation's economy, Walden paused.
"I'm going to answer that a little more broadly," she said.
"I think that, with a few exceptions where you might have an entire country that's very much tourism-dependent or maybe for U.S. states like Hawaii, I think very few governments in the world fully appreciate what the visitor economy brings to their country. I say that for a couple reasons. Often tourism is not even on the list of major industries, because it's a compilation of statistics that pulls from a number of sectors, be it accommodation, hospitality or arts and culture. It doesn't readily lend itself to be in a top ten list just by virtue of how it's calculated.
"But what governments are discovering, including our own I believe at every level, is that tourism underpins so much of the fabric of our country. We as citizens gain access to world because we have airlines that take us to places and bring other people here. We enjoy our communities because we have access to restaurants and brew pubs and mountain biking trails and galleries, all of which are made more viable" by visitors from outside Canada.
In British Columbia, for example, roughly 20% of the restaurant business is related to visitors. For museums, almost 40% of their revenue comes from visitors. In retail, it's perhaps 12 to 15%, she said.
"The list goes on and on. So much of what we enjoy as a society, the wheels of our economy are greased by things related to tourism, be it transportation or import/export relationships or our quality of life. I think we're getting a tremendous lesson in that right now, and I'm hopeful that coming out of this there will be a new appreciation for what the visitor economy truly brings to us as a society."
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