SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Tourism operators in the territory will see major changes in demographics but competition will only get more intense in the years to come.

Those were the big lessons from this year's NWT Tourism conference and annual general meeting, held at the Explorer Hotel in Yellowknife from Nov. 3 to Nov. 5.

This year, the event featured an entire day of seminars about working with Chinese visitors, including basics from the Tourism Association of Canada's Grace Xin and Lu Liu, from Chinese bank merchant Union Pay, through which Chinese travellers often make payments.

Executive director Cathie Bolstad said some of the lessons were small, simple things.

"I learned that when Chinese visitors are like us when they arrive, they'd like some kind of comfort food," she said. "Only for them it's not fruit, it's noodles."

NWT Tourism continues to actively court Chinese visitors. Following the organization's recent trips to Asia for two trade shows, Bolstad said her social media contract in China will now include looking at using both Weibo and WeChat, chat and messaging applications similar to Twitter.

Business travel and media familiarization trips were also two major topics at this year's conference.

Notably, the organization's conference bureau announced that it has already confirmed $1.3 million in future conference revenue.

Bolstad also announced that the summer trip to the territory by Chinese celebrity Godfrey Gao, which produced an 11-minute video presentation highlighting the Nahanni National Park, the Virginia Falls as well as fishing around Yellowknife and strong aboriginal content, had already been viewed more than 1 million times online.

This year, the winner of the service excellence award is Jackie Challis. Originally a tourism coordinator when she first moved to Inuvik in 2008, Challis became the Town of Inuvik's economic development manager and now works for the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation.

For the Mike Stilwell Lifetime Achievement Award, this year's winner was North-Wright Airways founder Warren Wright.

Wright's leadership in the Sahtu region was cited as one of the reasons for his award win.

"His personal engagement with residents, attendance at tourism meetings, and memberships in tourism stakeholder groups such as NWT Tourism, the Tourism Marketing Advisory Committee, the Norman Wells Historical Society and the Sahtu Visitors Association have all been factors in his positive impact in the region," Bolstad said.

According to NWT Tourism, the Sahtu has been successful at growing its number of tourists - currently 1,500 a year- and Wright's efforts and initiatives have been a key factor in the region's success.

"Warren is an integral part of the Sahtu and the Northwest Territories' tourism industry," Bolstad said.

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