Encouraging Northern Ontario tourism.

With a tourism industry in decline, Ontario governmental agencies are speaking with industry representatives to formulate a five-year marketing strategy for the North.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"We have what's almost the perfect storm right now," says Gerry Cariou, executive director, Sunset Country Travel Association.

"There's issues surrounding passports, there's the issue surrounding the strong Canadian dollar, and people are being turned back at the border much more frequently. Some people would say we're in freefall, and while I wouldn't go quite that far just yet, we're certainly in trouble."

Representing 500 outfitters and other members from west of Thunder Bay to the Manitoba border and up to the James Bay coast, Cariou says the discussions surrounding the Five-Year Tourism Marketing Strategy for Northern Ontario is a step in the right direction.

The project is an initiative of the Strategic Tourism Development and Marketing Partnership for Northern Ontario. This represents a partnership between Industry Canada/FedNor, Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation. It also includes the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation (OTMPC), an agency of Ministry of Tourism.

"The end game in all of this is to align and coordinate our marketing activities," says Chris Milner, director, Northern Marketing, OTMPC. "This way, we have the most effective marketing push we possibly can to interest people in Northern Ontario, and that's from Timmins to Red Lake, from the Quebec border to Manitoba."

To highlight the challenges faced by the tourism industry, Milner quotes a Statistics Canada report which found January's same-day car travel to Canada from the United States fell below a million trips for the first time since record-keeping began in 1972.

To help rectify the problem, while navigating the differences between northeastern and northwestern Ontario, the partnership recently sought input from the tourism community.

From April 24 to May 4, meetings were held in eight cities across the North, from Dryden to North Bay. Approximately 300 industry representatives were in attendance throughout the various meetings to voice their opinions on what steps should be taken to move the project forward.

Though hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities still rank foremost among tourism opportunities, attendees remarked that there is still a perception among tourists that the North is a wilderness with no distinctive image.

While other comments repeated themselves throughout the sessions, another constant refrain in each was the need to speak with a unified voice, something that is echoed by Cariou.

"What we all need to do is get on the same songsheet, sing the same song and work together," he says.

"Implementation is also key because you can suffer from paralysis by analysis. I'm not saying that's happening now, but once we get the plan, let's execute it and move forward, because we don't have time and we need to take some risks."

The input from these consultations will be analyzed throughout the summer. A strategic plan will be developed by the fall and presented to industry stakeholders through a second round of consultations.

"This is a strategy for all of Northern Ontario, not just a strategy for OTMP," Milner says. "As the lead marketer, obviously, we're going to take the outcome and we're going to put it to work, but this is a strategy meant just as much for the cities of Northern Ontario, the Northern Ontario regional tourist associations, right down to the operator, the guy that matters the most in this whole equation."

While much remains to be done to revitalize the flagging tourism industry, Cariou says the OMTPC's involvement of various Northern businesses and stakeholders in the formulation of this new strategy is key to creating a realistic solution.

"You can make decisions in a vacuum and some agencies certainly do that, but here you have people working on this who are familiar with Northern Ontario, who have offices located here, so we're not getting Bay Street decisions made for us," Cariou says. "There are some people in Toronto who think Northern Ontario is the Muskokas, and I'm quite impressed with the effort of OTMP staff, who seem to have made a real concerted effort to involve everyone on the ground as much as possible."

By NICK STEWART

Northern Ontario Business