Icarus Foundation's Guide to Green Festivals and Events

I had a chance to catch last evening's presentation on climate change and tourism by Dr Rachel Dodds of the Icarus Foundation and it really reinforced my beliefs that the sustainability of our natural environment will be key to maintaining and growing our tourism economy for the city and region.

Its our goal to become leaders in urban sustainable tourism and with the abundance of partners and tools we have at our disposal, its achievable. We're currently ramping up our dialogue with our Active Transportation and Greenwise initiatives, with Lakehead University and others who all share this goal. We've had interest from some traditionally consumptive partners including the snow mobiling and hunting segments, who want to learn more about this. It's that broad range of interest that's encouraging. Remember, its not that we have to give up our recreational passions and activities that are part of our northern culture. Its just that we undertake them with an eye to ensuring they exist in the future.

The Icarus Foundation has some great research and planning tools to assist tourism industry partners to become more aware of their ecological footprint and provide planning tools to become more environmentally responsible.

Locally, we see this awareness starting to grow and recent Municipal awards granted to the Victoria Inn and OLG Casino Thunder Bay are evidence that economy and ecology are inter elated more and more in our industry. My vision is to see environmental sustainably worn like a badge...quite literally...by as many of our local tourism partners as possible, letting visitors know our values.

There's one particular tool I want to hi lite in this post. In 2008, the Foundation released a Guide to Green Festivals and Events. This 15 page guide provides some insights and ideas that can be readily implemented by organizations at all levels. Its easy to follow and gives some great real examples of what's done elsewhere.

To read it online or print it (but only if you need to print it!), visit http://www.theicarusfoundation.com/Images/images/Greening_Festivals_and_Events.pdf

08 Visitor Experience Magazine Makes Big Online Waves

The 2008 Thunder Bay Experience Visitor magazine was launched March 1st to great responses from consumers and industry alike and the demand will continue to climb into the summer leisure market season.

In addition to the 120 000 copies in circulation (a 20% increase over 2007) the guide is also available online at http://www.visitthunderbay.com/. In its first two months posted, it has been downloaded 9234 times. At this pace, it is conceivable that it will be viewed online up to 54 000 times this year. This would be a significant increase over the 31 000 copies downloaded in 2007 of the previous guide.

While high quality select print visitor information is still considered an essential part of our marketing mix, online posting of the guide makes perfect sense in that it delivers greater reach for our advertisor's investments in the guide, reduces postage costs for one-off distribution and helps meet our goals of environmental responsibility.

The Experience magazine is important for attracting new visitors to the community but more importantly, it can help keep existing visitors in the community for a longer stay, thereby increasing economic impacts. While we strive to attract new visitors, the current North American economic climate also has us looking at visitor retention as a means to compensate for any loss, in visitor numbers, from particular markets. Comprehesive information sources are a great way to achieve this goal.