Thorunn Howatt
Northern News Services

Fort Simpson (Sep 09/02) - The evocative canyons and thunderous waterfalls of Nahanni National Park will continue to be the North's -- indeed Canada's -- best-kept secret if not for the perseverance of NWT tour operators.

A contingent of nine Northerners from Fort Simpson to Inuvik will make a trek to Germany later this week to promote NWT tourism. They are competing with the world -- Nepal, Africa and Thailand -- for tourism dollars. And attracting tourists costs big money.

Ted Grant started flying tourists over Nahanni in the early '80s. With heavy marketing, he helped make the area into a vacation destination by the early '90s.

"As a result we built up the tourism numbers so that there were approximately 1,300 people going into the Nahanni and Simpson Air took in about 85 per cent of them," said Grant, who owns Simpson Air and Nahanni Mountain Lodge at Little Doctor Lake.

The aircraft charter and tour company flies visitors into the Nahanni via float-plane.

The river is an exciting destination for canoeists and white water rafters. And Nahanni Mountain Lodge is relaxing for travellers searching for more comfortable environs.

"But we were down to about 750 (visitors) last year. Nobody has done any marketing for several years," said Grant, who explained local marketing and brochures just don't cut it.

About 35 per cent of Grant's customers are from outside of Canada and about 15 per cent are from Europe. "But it should be more."

He said he suspects it will take three to five years of marketing to lure a steadier stream of Europeans to the North.

9/11 didn't hurt business

Luckily, the September 11 terrorist attacks didn't take a toll on Grant's business.

A lot of tourists are still driving to Fort Simpson and flying to the Nahanni.

Visitors to Grant's Nahanni witness exhilarating views with amusing and anecdotal narration about the history of the park: haunted valleys, gold-digging treachery and wildlife.

Then Grant will wear out his passengers with a steep trek from top to bottom of the Virginia Falls, twice as high as Niagara and well worth the hike.

So when Grant and the tourism group are in Germany, they want to convince about 50 German tour operators and wholesalers to sell Northern travel packages.

"These are the folks who actually package product and then turn around and sell them to consumers in Europe," said Northwest Territories Tourism's David Grindlay, who explained that the Canadian companies could turn up in German brochures.

This isn't the first time Northerners have gone to Germany to flog Northern Canadian visits but, "Instead of having hundreds and hundreds of consumers or tour operators, we are going over to a specific city and we are inviting targeted tour operators to come and talk to just NWT tour operators.

The trip will cost each Northern tour operator $3,000, offsetting the total amount which Grindlay guessed to be about twice that. NWT Tourism will pick up the rest of the tab.

While 9/11 had a devastating effect on overseas travel throughout North America, Grindlay said to give the Canadian industry a pat on the back. "They didn't stop doing what they should be doing and that is that they should make sure they continue to go to these travel trade market places," said Grindlay.