The Cutting Edge experiential travel training workshop is one of many small steps that are being taken by Travel Manitoba to help its tourism industry partners professionally engage and differentiate their tourism businesses, and their tourism product mix. The training session created opportunities for industry partners to see tourism and travel through a very current doorway – research based, market driven, niche, experiential, and within a context of social networking and social media.

So, what happens when different people get together in the same room and learn about new concepts in tourism? Do they go away and independently hide and secretly apply their new tools, information, generate ideas, and return to business as usual in an isolated way? Or, do they use it as an opportunity to shift their behaviours and create new collaboratives?

One of the outcomes of delivering the Cutting Edge training at Elkhorn Resort and Riding Mountain National Park was that a number of parkland area tourism operators discovered a new-found synergy and a will to start something new. Within the training program, there was an opportunity for participants to discuss action steps – this group got together and discussed how they could collaborate more closely.

Since the Cutting Edge training, this group of over 15 operators from Onanole, Dauphin, Kelwood, Clear Lake, Rossburn, and Riding Mountain National Park have developed a product development alliance. With a new mission, vision, goals and objectives developed quickly under the guidance of James Gordon facilitating the group, they are focused on results.

What I have observed is a spirit of optimism, a focus on action, quick decisions, trust, a willingness to share, and a commitment to next steps. I am quite excited about where this will lead. Most of all, the group is very clear that the focus is not just about adding more stuff, and promoting stuff. This group is clearly focused on adding experiences that are saleable to the marketplace. The training, I believe, has enabled everyone to understand the potential for focusing on experiential travel. But, the path forward, I believe, comes from a collective positive attitude. Stay tuned!

From October 17 – 20, 2011 Travel Manitoba hosted its first ever experiential travel training initiative for the tourism industry at Elkhorn Resort and Riding Mountain National Park.

Polkas, Paska and Perogies - how to be an honorary Dauphin Ukrainian!

Staff from Travel Manitoba’s new Visitor Experiences product development team and over 24 members of the tourism industry participated in a GMIST-Travel Manitoba partnered four-day intensive training initiative dubbed “The Cutting Edge”. This is an evolved course, bringing forward content from  The Gros Morne Institute for Sustainable Tourism’s Edge of the Wedge program. However, much new content has been created about relevant experiential travel business application, revenue frameworks, and methodologies for crafting experiences along with costing and pricing them. Travel Manitoba is steering a ship in which they have squarely stepped into a role of assisting the tourism industry to add experiences to the product mix. It’s great to see this focus on experiential travel moving westward across Canada.

New ideas for experiential travel products, new marketing initiatives, and a much larger network of tourism businesses and professionals has emerged from this training.

A second delivery of The Cutting Edge will be taking place in Winnipeg in January. It will be the first time that this kind of experiential travel training will be offered in an urban context.

When a number of things begin happening concurrently, with alignment around a theme, it is worth taking note. It takes time for new concepts and new ways of doing business to gain traction. A recent article about experiential travel in the Finger Lakes Times business section, featured The Inns of Aurora and E.B. Morgan House which have launched new experiential travel programs “to help guests experience the authentic culture and people of the Finger Lakes”.

In keeping with my perspective that the heart of an experience is a real person, with an authentic story to share about a place or time, The Inns launched their experiential program this fall with Rose Ryan of Harvest Home Organics farm. “Rose is a huge part of why we ventured into experiential travel,” said Sue Edinger, GM of the Aurora Inn. “She embodies the best spirit of our rural welcome, and she exemplifies the farm-to-table movement that is thriving in Finger Lakes. She is everything we want our guests to know about the Finger Lakes, and that made us certain we could do this program well.”

Marketing magazine profiled Travel Alberta’s new brand that was introduced to over 700 industry professionals in late October. New TV spots that hit emotional and experiential hot buttons have been created to “allow visitors to share in the emotion of the experience, ending with the brand slogan “Remember to breathe” giving consumers a new way to relate to the remarkable landscapes of Alberta and the Rockies, a Canadian icon. Royce Chwin (previously with the CTC), explained that “Today’s travellers are looking less for specific sites and more for unique experiences.” I look forward to seeing these new TV spots and learning another province is starting to develop its marketing creative capacity positioning around experiential travel.

“When you are always a half hour ahead, you never feel the need to catch up…” is the verbal tag at the end of a beautiful video on Newfoundland and Labrador’s YouTube channel. Have a look at these amazing commercials and see how they have very carefully built imagery and emotional content into their marketing approach. The Newfoundland and Labrador experience is stunningly clear. They have been crafting this experiential approach for a couple of years, and it’s working if the result is to invite more people to experience Newfoundland and Labrador.

My sense is that experiential travel is now being understood and valued by tourism businesses. It’s time has come!

It’s here in English and French!  A completely updated Experiences Toolkit (Volume 2) released just as the second wave of Signature Experiences  that qualified to be in the Canadian Tourism Collection are announced.

It was a delight to be the lead author on this new toolkit for industry and work  in partnership with Lesley Anderson and Will Harding at the CTC.  Lots of hours, lots of new materials, five new case studies from:

• The Halifax Citadel National Historic Site of Canada (NS)
• Shediac Bay Cruises (NB)
• Adventure Canada (Northern)
• Northern Edge Algonquin (ON)
• The Fairmont Empress – Friends of the Empress (BC)

Take a peak and let us know what you think!

These are all experiential travel opportunities included in the recent Cutting Edge Experiential Travel training offered in Onanole Manitoba. Welcoming 31 folks from the tourism industry, community and economic development organization and destination marketers we embarked on a 3.5 day journey to explore the potential for experiential travel in rural Manitoba. This is a tourism development opportunity that has relevance to all areas of Canada – rural to urban, north, south, east and west. It aligns with how the Canadian Tourism Commission is positioning Canada and is part of Travel Manitoba’s strategic direction.  Our job as operators is to ensure the product is there!

Where do you begin – start looking for the hidden gems in our community!  We found a few diamonds … take a peak at our course video! Then think about the potential for your own community.

If you live in Manitoba and missed this training opportunity – you are in luck!  Travel Manitoba is offering a second session, this time in an urban setting in Winnipeg Jan 16 – 20th. Contact Edge of the Wedge GMIST graduate, and now Cutting Edge graduate Laurenda Madill with the Visitor Experiences Development team for more information.

Sixty seven new companies were added to the new CTC Signature Experiences Collection today, bringing the total to 115.

President and CEO Michelle McKenzie stated “The power of the program is that it will inspire Canadians to create, develop, and enhance tourism products to become truly experiential and competitive—connecting international travellers to Canada in unique ways. The criteria have been set so that we find new Signature Experience members that match what international customers want to buy now. We encourage tourism businesses across the country to take advantage of the many tools we offer to help them meet the program’s criteria.”

Our very own Todd Lucier’s Northern Edge Algonquin nature retreat was included!  Check out the list and consider carefully if this could be an opportunity for your business!

After a lengthy review of hundreds of applicants in multiple categories, TIAC posted the top 3 candidates and honourable mentions for the awards that will be presented 24 Nov at their annual summit.  In the Travel Experience Award category we have a little something from across the country.

• Aikens Lake Wilderness Lodge (Atikaki Wilderness Provincial Park, MB)
• Angel Destinations (West Vancouver, BC)
• Village historique de Val-Jalbert (Chambord, QC)

Honourable Mention: Road-to-Sea Guides Tours (Moncton, NB)

Congratulations to all of you for your nomination!

After seven wonderful years of developing, delivering and continually evolving the Edge of the Wedge Experiential travel training program in Rocky Harbour NL, a new, evolved course is under development.  Through a partnership with Travel Manitoba, GMIST, Tourism Cafe (Todd Lucier and Nancy Arsenault) and Earth Rhythms (Celes Davar) and support from Parks Canada (Riding Mountain National Park), Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives and the Manitoba Regional Tourism Network, we are currently designing and developing the new program for its first delivery in Manitoba Oct 16 – 19th!

Here’s what Travel Manitoba has to say.

While we will be bringing of the new foundational materials forward into the Cutting Edge course – here’s some of what’s new!

• New locations, provincial partners, experiential partners. The course will be in the rural setting of Riding Mountain National Park, the January course will be our first URBAN Edge course in Winnipeg.
• Building experiential travel capacity within Travel Manitoba at the same time we develop the course. Germain to this is working with Laurenda Madill, an Edge Graduate at Travel Manitoba who is our lead ‘gal in province’ working at the catalyst between the players.
• Incorporating the Travel Manitoba marketing folks in supporting the social media and marketing activities and educational sessions in the course
• New sessions on branding, thinking like a traveller, global success stories, more on pricing
• More hands-on activities in the program to work with the learning and apply immediately each business context,
• Travel Manitoba staff being coached to deliver some of the educational sessions and support the logistics
• Post-course coaching sessions with Travel Manitoba, and supported by Nancy and Celes
• Two significant goals:  (1) participants to have new experiential product to market for 2012 and 2013 (supported by Travel Manitoba) and (2) the course content to be able to be taught by the Travel Manitoba team, and Nancy and Celes moving to a coaching roll after the first two deliveries.

And key elements we wanted to keep!

• GMIST led the partnership discussions with Travel Manitoba to create this opportunity
• GMIST agreement to incorporate excellent Edge of the Wedge content into the new evolved community based course
• Nancy and Celes as lead instructors, Jonathan Foster (GMIST) as an advisor.
• Our experiential teaching methodology
• Working with communities. Coaching the capacity of local area experience providers to contribute to the training program but also continue with their experience evolutions into market
• Optimizing Parks Canada – Riding Mountain National Park as our new Stage this Fall, the Forks National Historic Site in January
• Connecting to the Canadian Tourism Commission – their Explorer Quotient and new Signature Experiences Collection
• Length of program – 3.25 days (Yup here we go again – intensive, immersive, engaging, fun!)

As Travel Manitoba moves strategically into embracing experiential travel within their long term development plans for the province, we are pleased that the collaboration between GMIST, the Tourism Cafe and Earth Rhythms can continue and extend the collective learning into new regions.

Step into the sacred landscape of the Aisina’pi with passionate people who love photography and draw personal inspiration from the land to the lens.  Now in it’s third year, the Art Retreat at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park at  Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park will be an unforgettable weekend of learning, sharing and photographic expression.Video: Artist Retreat at Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park

Led by John Novotany, an extremely talented videographer, director, film editor, currently working for Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation he’ll take you into into special places, at all hours of the day and night and connect you and your camera using time lapse photography, night photography, DSLR filming amongst other things!

When is this experience happening!  Friday Sept 9th to Monday September 12th!  You can register here if this fits your passion. Click down to the 3rd button to find the program on this Alberta government website where you can sign up.

We here, at the Tourism Cafe, are very proud of the work Aaron Domes and his colleagues are doing to bring this experience to the market. Many of them participated in the Alberta Tourism Parks and Recreation’s training program

we developed and delivered for them  – and John was our team mate behind the video and still camera!

Equipped with a new brand “It’s Manitoba Time”, Travel Manitoba is set to work with industry to increase the reasons why people should visit Manitoba! For over a year now they have been investing in a number of strategic and tactical initiatives to set the stage for the future and they just announced with decision to invest in a new Cutting Edge Experiential Travel Training program for the province. What is exciting about this initiative is another province is helping operators learn about the shifts in their business, tactics and opportunities that can be realized if you layer experiences into your  product and market development mix.

I’ve extracted the except from their Tourism Industry news, which you can subscribe to and keep abreast of the exciting things happening in Manitoba.

“In a globally competitive environment like tourism, how do you find your advantage? How do you differentiate yourself from all the others who might have something similar to offer? How do you attract new markets and higher yield customers? And then how do you do address all of this without incurring considerable risk or having to make major investments in larger scale infrastructure?

Well, there’s no simple answer to these questions, but Travel Manitoba believes part of the answer may be found in experiential travel product development. Experiential travel engages visitors in a series of memorable travel activities, revealed over time, that are inherently personal, utilize the senses, and make connections on a physical, emotional, spiritual, social, or intellectual level.

Traditional market segments, such as adventure, cultural, Aboriginal or nature travel can certainly be in the mix, and experiential travel products can provide additional appeal by providing an add-on opportunity to something you already provide or an alternate opportunity that caters to a market you hadn’t yet been able to attract. For example, you may offer a cultural experience that allows your guests to interact personally with a respected artist that is featured in your product thereby providing a dimension that makes your product attractive to a segment of the market that it wasn’t before.

As such, we think experiential travel opportunities are something for the industry to consider developing. It doesn’t mean you have to replace your proven tourism offerings. Rather, it should be viewed as an opportunity to incrementally add to the inventory of types of products you make available to your guests and as a way of attracting new customers.

In April 2011 Travel Manitoba began a process of shifting its tourism development activities to support this kind of product and market development. Travel Manitoba is now pleased to announce that it is offering a specialized multi-day product development training program called The Cutting Edge.

The program will be delivered in October 2011 in the Riding Mountain National Park area and again in January 2012 in the Winnipeg area. On-going coaching on experience development will also be a feature of this initiative. This program is modelled after a similar program that was pioneered in Atlantic Canada through the Gros Morne Institute for sustainable Tourism (GMIST). Accordingly, The Cutting Edge program is a collaborative effort with GMIST and their instructors from the Tourism Cafe (Dr. Nancy Arsenault) and Earth Rhythms (Celes Davar). This program is also being made possible through support from Parks Canada, Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives and the Manitoba Regional Tourism Network. Participants in the program who carry on to create new experiences will be eligible for select marketing support through Travel Manitoba at no cost for a defined period of time. “  (END OF QUOTED EXTRACT).

Great news for visitors, the depth and breadth or meaningful visitor experiences continues to grow and support the Canadian Tourism’s positioning of Canada as a place for extraordinary experiences!