Travel Alberta held an open house in Athabasca last Friday where they met with local tourism operators.
“The open houses are really designed to connect with people,” said Royce Chwin, vice president of marketing and communications for Travel Alberta.
“It’s more about talking with, than talking at. Not only do we want to share Travel Alberta in terms of the things we’re doing, but we want to share ideas with the operators, and we also want their feedback.”
The day-long event was held at the Athabasca Regional Multiplex.
Chwin said the open house allows Travel Alberta to hear the stories of different tourism operators (and opportunities) throughout the province.
“What happens is we start to share the ideas around, and it makes for a stronger tourism industry,” he explained. “We are talking about how we can collaborate to make tourism stronger in our local communities and region.”
Chwin said there were many topics of discussion broached during the open house.
“One of the things we talked about is the power of the brand, and what we can do to collaborate on the brand that is Tourism Alberta,” he said. “We are offering the ability for our tourism operators to sit down with representatives from Travel Alberta and talk about their needs.”
Travel Alberta continues to refine the way they present themselves and the province to people, and recently unveiled the latest iteration in this process, called ‘Brand 2.0’, which is geared towards promoting the region of northern Alberta.
“We did a number of aerial photos, and we shot a whole floatplane sequence, fishing and camping,” Chwin explained.
They have also introduced the Alberta Stories Program, which takes local tourism outlets and adventures and showcases them in a short clip that travelers will view.
“That program was designed to uncover hidden gems around the province,” Chwin said. “We shot a sequence with Grand Rapids Wilderness Adventures with jet boats on the Athabasca River that is awesome. To have that kind of content to tell the story, what we do is take that, and push it out to our customers who might be looking for that experience in Athabasca. You need to come to Athabasca and check it out.”
Another plus for the north is that tourism outlets are working together.
“The operators in the north have accessed more cooperative marketing money since April 1, than they did all last year,” Chwin said.
“We’re really excited about that because it means more operators are getting engaged in tourism. More of them are finding opportunities to work together, and help get the tourism message out.”
The more tourism operators work together, the better the industry will be.
“We look forward to doing more open houses next year.”
