Recently the federal Canadian budget made a significant statement on tourism in the Throne Speech and specifically allocating millions of dollars of federal support to the industry. This is inevitably linked to the continuous and tireless effort of people in our industry across the country, and led by our Tourism Industry Associations nationally and at the provincial level as our representative voice in Ottawa. Thank you all — we have made great progress and now we must use the provincial and federal opportunities upon to to responsibly and sustainably increase tourism visitation and celebrate all that is terrific about . We must also track, report back and celebrate progress to continually educate the people of Canada and our politicians about the value of tourism. We all know how to travel, but strangely far to few actually understand the business of tourism that allows us all to enjoy travel!
Now tourism leaders in the USA are poised to meet President Obama to speak about the importance of their $740 billion dollar industry that employs 7.7 million people. Again, another show of strength and understanding that the tourism agenda is gaining political ground and our metrics and impact about the economic, social, cultural and environmental attributes for tourism are becoming better understood – one step at a time.
