Nunavut Tourism looks at long game
Growth continues as Canadian numbers lag
Casey Lessard
Northern News Services
Published Monday, November 3, 2014
NUNAVUT
A co-ordinated approach to promoting Nunavut's brand on the national level appears to be working as the Canadian Tourism Commission's website will now feature hunting and fishing, which is good news for Nunavut's outfitters.
Visiting Iqaluit Oct. 27, Canadian Tourism Commission senior analyst Kate Mulligan outlines the national tourism promoter's mission and ways it can help Nunavut increase tourism. - Casey Lessard/NNSL photo
Jessie Peterloosie of Pond Inlet guides some visitors on a boat trip through the Eclipse Sound in 2013. The Canadian Tourism Commission is actively promoting Nunavut as a unique tourism destination. - NNSL file photo |
"The CTC has never marketed hunting and fishing, which for a lot of the country are major tourist activities," Nunavut Tourism chief executive officer Colleen Dupuis said. "We've worked with the other two territories, northern Saskatchewan, northern Manitoba and Newfoundland-Labrador because we all have similar interests and issues. We've been going to the national bodies as a group, which we've found has made a difference."
The CTC is a national body that promotes tourism in Canada to foreign markets. For Dupuis, it's helpful, but not as high of a priority as the domestic market. Perhaps that will change as the CTC starts to promote Northern experiences.
"Wildlife viewing, cultural activities, the scenery," are the main attractions, she said. "We have very unique experiences in all of those. You can't find the things that are here anywhere else on Earth. We are one of the last untouched places on Earth. You can go out on a week-long trip to the floe edge or out on the land, and you don't see other people. There are very few places in the world where you're going to go on vacation where that's going to happen."
Sharing that story across Canada has paid off for individual outfitters. Instead of paying big money for national advertising, Nunavut Tourism has focused on familiarization tours, paying for individual journalists to visit, as long as they're committed to writing a story or filming a TV show.
"We've had extraordinary results from those," she said. "We sent a fishing TV show a couple of years ago to the B&J Fly Fishing in the Kitikmeot. After the show aired, they were booked for two years. We did the same with a show called Canada in the Rough, a hunting show shown around the world, with a snow goose product in the Kivalliq region. That outfitter is now booked a long time in advance."
When Nunavut was featured on the cover of the Globe and Mail's travel section, it brought big results.
"To buy that kind of advertising is $150,000 to $200,000," Dupuis said. "We can't afford that. But the cost of the trip was about $4,500, which we could afford. The return on investment is huge."
For CTC senior analyst Kate Mulligan, who visited Iqaluit Oct. 27, Nunavut needs to turn its weaknesses into strengths.
"What differentiates Nunavut is the fact that it's super-expensive to go to, but that works in your favour because it becomes an epic adventure, a bucket-list adventure, because you have so much to offer," Mulligan said. "I think people will put the price aside if the experience is there, and the value is there. If Nunavut can focus in on attracting that specific traveller, and by that I mean a high-yield traveller, they'll be successful."
Hall Beach Hunters and Trappers Organization representative Levi Kaunak, in the capital for a Nunavut Tourism conference, wanted to hear more about how to promote the territory abroad.
"We need more support from the CTC to promote Nunavut," Kaunak said. "There's local culture that needs to be spread out, we have different cultures across the territory that need to be introduced to the world so we can have more tourism."
Dupuis says the priority is helping local outfitters and affiliated businesses develop offerings people want to buy.
"There's money going into training to make sure people are adequately trained," she said, "and that there's a sense of confidence from consumers that people are licensed and insured and have wilderness first aid, all of the basic stuff that you as a visitor would want someone taking you out in this type of environment to have."
Nunavut saw 4,200 tourists in 2013, and many more people coming for business or to visit family and friends, she said. France, Germany and Great Britain are the leading foreign markets bringing tourists to Nunavut.
The territory is less prone to macro-economic fluctuations, as seen after the global downturn, and still experienced growth in 2010, when Toronto's tourism industry fell by 45 per cent, she said.
"We haven't rebounded as much, we're at three or four, because our planning cycle is longer. But we have had a steady growth, which is great. We're on target for what we hope to be in the Nunavut Tourism Strategy for 2018."
