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HAY RIVER
Hay River tourism operators and other businesses are just months away from welcoming approximately 130 delegates to the NWT Tourism Conference and Annual General Meeting in November.

Registration for the event, scheduled from Nov. 5 to 7, began on Aug. 8 as the 2013 conference website went live.

Brian Desjardins: Executive director of NWT Tourism says Hay River is blessed with lots of tour operators. - NNSL file photo

"We're very excited that we'll be hosting the AGM and conference in Hay River this year," said Brian Desjardins, NWT Tourism's executive director.

"It's an opportunity for the local tourism industry to profile and showcase their operations and their activities, so there will be an opportunity for pre-and-or-post (conference) tour activities for those that attend."

The conference venue will be Hay River's Don Stewart Recreation Centre. As part of the town's bid to host the conference, the town offered use of the recreation at no cost to the organizers.

"It's going to be full with our marketing campaign presentations to professional development opportunities to workshops, open discussions amongst the industry, and we will have an opening reception where we will feature some of the local entertainment and we'll be bringing some aboriginal tourism speakers to the event this year, too," Desjardins said.

Every three years, the annual conference, which is usually held in Yellowknife, moves to another NWT community beyond the capital. Hay River has previously housed the event in 2002 and 2005. Norman Wells and Inuvik have also been the venue for past conferences.

The theme of this year's conference is "feeding the fire." Aboriginal groups will soon be invited to prepare a feeding the fire ceremony to open the conference, said Julie Warnock, NWT Tourism's communications co-ordinator.

Entertainment, including an as-yet-undetermined comic headliner for the banquet, is being booked soon by the organizing committee, which includes Hay River's economic co-ordinator Jordan Stackhouse and members of Tourism NWT.

Past NWT Tourism ambassador Adam Beach, star of the highly-rated CBC Television drama Arctic Air, is scheduled to attend, Desjardins said. Beach was the face of Tourism NWT's recent marketing campaign during season two of the TV series, during which large ads featuring Beach also ran in The Globe and Mail newspaper.

Hay River has a lot to offer the territory's tourism industry, Desjardins said.

"Hay River is blessed with more tour operators than other communities, next to Yellowknife," he said. "We have the highest number of tour operators in the NWT in the Yellowknife area, so we're hoping that we'll get some good attendance from the Yellowknife area to Hay River."... And not just Yellowknife, but the surrounding communities, like Inuvik and elsewhere."

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