U.S. Visitor Traffic to Thunder Bay on the Increase This Year

It is a pretty significant fact that we are a forty five minute drive from the U.S. border and a source market in excess of three hundred and thirty million people.  Despite conditions of the past decade, the U.S. market continues to be important to us.  However, this market has declined over the past decade in a world of security and economic issues, coupled with inconsistent marketing investments to keep our region top of mind.

In light of the slow US economy, passport requirements, border security, high fuel prices and an at par currency, you'll have to understand if we're a little giddy today in the Tourism Thunder Bay office.

The second quarter border crossing statistics came in this week and to the end of June 2012, U.S. visitors to Thunder Bay through the Pigeon River border crossing have increased by 3.5% or about 1068 persons.  While not explosive year over year growth, its slow and steady as the old tortoise versus hare fable goes, and that's what wins the race. 

While same day traffic declined, it was the important overnight visits that increased, improving hotel performance in what is already a strong urban market.  These longer stays translate into increased economic impacts for our community and region and speak to a desire for avid travellers to explore in greater depth. From an economic impact perspective, this translates to approximately $370 596 in new visitor spending and a total economic impact including the multiplier effect of about $592 953.  Overall, that's a pretty good return early on even before the critically important July and August travel data is reported.  By about late October, we'll have a good sense of the true impact of the new investments being made. 

With approximately $1.1 million in new regional tourism marketing investments being made across Northwestern Ontario in the fishing, hunting, broad outdoors, convention, sports tourism and motor touring segments, its encouraging to see some early wins.  From our early indicators, the majority of this upswing is related to touring and outdoor adventure segment campaigns specifically into the United States totalling approximately $275 000.  This included the popular "Ride Lake Superior" motorcycle program, enhanced broad outdoor campaigns targeting Minnesota and Wisconsin and wider reaching US avid outdoor media channels.  We've also been able to host far more media familiarization trips, and build new relationships with US media such as Northern Wilds, Lake Superior Magazine and AAA media channels to grow interest in the area.  Tying the natural environment to the highway corridors is critical to maximizing visitor attraction.  Most travellers are outdoor enthusiasts but very few want to really rough it.  trails and waterfalls, birding, beaches and so forth are all huge draws but visitors want a good meal and comfy bed too.  communicating the epic-ness of Lake Superior - and our hundreds of thousands of other lakes too - will be critical to growing our markets.

The majority of the Northwest's angling traffic flows through Fort Frances so we'll be watching those numbers closely as well and reporting on the broader impacts.

The regional approach to partnership building is critical to continuing to build on these early successes and together with partners like Sunset Country Travel Association, Algoma Kinnewabi Travel and our friends in Northern Minnesota, we'll continue to work together to make the visitor pie bigger for everyone by focusing on epic experiences worth the distance. 

After all, how far would you travel for the perfect outdoor vacation?

"Ride Lake Superior" Promises New Opportunities for the Motorcycle Visitor

Back in the spring of 2011, before I departed on my temporary new assignment, I was working alongside several other partners on the "Ride Lake Superior" project that was equal part capacity building, and consumer marketing strategy.

I should admit right off the bat that I'm not a rider....yet. I probably need to address my attention deficit disorder first. I did ride a few times as a teenager on old Honda 450 Nighthawk and I've been collecting gear for a few years now...hiding it from my wife. My goal in 2012 is to learn to ride and finally get a bike, probably a KLR 650. My story is no different than thousands of other 40 somethings right now.

Motorcycle touring is an area of tourism that has shown incremental growth over the past few years and promises to be one segment that will continue to be a more important element of our diversified strategy. Thunder Bay's growth in US traffic at a time when regional US fishing traffic is in decline, is attributed to this touring segment. The demographic is perfect with the average new rider being 45 years of age, with above average income. The motorcycle touring rider is an avid tourist, interested in a unique experience.

Lake Superior's circle tour route is already an incredible thirteen hundred mile (two thousand kilometer) ribbon of highway around the world's largest freshwater lake. Its this very route, changing scenery and authentic communities that will make it one of North America's epic motorcycle riding destinations.

Last year, Tourism Thunder Bay partnererd with Algoma Kinnewabi Travel Association through a new RTO collaborative partnership to begin the journey of meeting this vision. We retained the brilliance of Chris Hughes of BC Hughes consulting to develop and deliver a series of motorcycle visitor readiness workshops ion Thunder Bay and Sault Ste Marie. The workshop, open to accommodation, attraction, event and other tourism operators provided an overview of the growth within this visitor segment and more importantly, the nuances of welcoming motorcycle culture into one's establishment and community.

Motorcyclists ride all day, stopping frequently to stretch, eat, take pictures, take in road side attractions. At night they want restaurants close to their accommodation and a comfortable nights sleep. They appreciate little details like towels in their rooms to wipe down bikes at the end of the day, concrete parking pads to keep their kickstands from digging into gravel or hot pavement, some prefer to park under canopies, in a secure area or under the watchful eye of video camera. They like to know where to find parts and service in a community and they like to be made to feel welcome with dedicated parking areas and even free on street parking.

Over twenty three local hoteliers and attractions operators attended the Thunder Bay workshop and went through the self assessment process to be declared motorcycle market ready. On the heals of this workshop, we hosted Peter and Micheal Jacobs on their forty day epic Northern Ontario Ultimate Road trip sponsored by OTMPC's motor sport touring folks. They blogged, Facebooked and twittered their way into the minds of avid riders across North America. Its important that the industry realizes just how supportive and dedicated the Ministry of Tourism is about growing this segment. Just check out gorideontario.com and you'll see what I mean.

Thunder Bay also played host to the 2011 Ontario Harley Owners Rally. If eight hundred participants and one half million dollars in economic impact don't support the positive impacts of motorcycle tourism, I'm not sure what does.

Skip to October 2011 when we were invited to Calumet in Michigan's Upper Peninsula to meet with U.S. tourism professionals also passionate about growing the motorcycle market on the U.S. side. The meeting was nothing short of amazing, with unanimous support to work together moving forward to eventually create a true bi-national partnership. Its one of the first times in my fifteen year tourism career that we had this kind of dialogue...and the drive down and back was spectacular.

This meeting and desire to work closer together was important on two fronts. The motorcyclist doesn't just visit a single community as their destination. They prefer a linear route with good quality ribbon of asphalt, linking many sights and experiences together. It imparitive to take a regional approach, working together to meet the demands of the visitor, leverage each other's resources to make a bigger impact that ultimitely benefits every community.

The second part is simply that Lake Superior is just plain awesome. If you're in the tourism industry anywhere around the lake and haven't driven the entire circumference, take a week and do it. The lake is our most important tourism asset for all of us within the basin. Great work has been done to promote the circle tour, notably through the exceptional work of Lake Superior Magazine, and the tourism industry and communities, by working together, can take this to a whole new level of international awareness that will bring new economic benefits to everyone. Its exciting times and working together on motorcycle touring is one catalyst to help grow new partnerships.

We've recently received RTO funding for the 2011 and 2012 marketing years and have once again, invested significantly in taking "Ride Lake Superior" to the next level. We'll be extending outreach to engage more partners, host more educational forums for industry and target new consumers through a series of digital, print and consumer show channels. We've retained BC Hughes to coordinate the second phase of the project through the development of a web portal, continuing education, branding and marketing. The new trade show display was launched in December at the Toronto International Motorcycle Show, was featured at the Toronto Motorcycle Supershow last weekend and will be featured at the Progressive Minneapolis Motorcycle Show February 3-5, 2012.

It is exciting times for the growth of motorcycle tourism and touring in general for our region. Let's keep on rolling.