Posted by Sudbury Northern Life Reporter Nick Stewart
The City of Greater Sudbury's tourism industry partnership has
laid out its plans to 2015, which include a goal of
transforming the city into one of Ontario's top four visitor
destinations.
Drawing parallels between Mount Rushmore in South Dakota,
Disney World in Florida and even Science North in Sudbury,
local tourism officials illustrated how this kind of bold
vision is needed to achieve great things.
"It would be wildly optimistic for us to think we can attract
more visitors than places in the province like Toronto or
Niagara Falls or Ottawa," said Rob Skelly, manager of tourism,
culture and marketing with the City of Greater Sudbury.
However, if the city can be top-of-mind with potential
visitors, then they have achieved their goal, he added.
Known as Destination Sudbury 2015, this long-term plan was
presented at a recent Greater Sudbury Tourism Forum organized
by Sudbury Tourism, an group made up of 70 local businesses.
The group identified two separate goals: the enhancement of its
organization, and the development of strategic marketing
programs.
In fact, work has already begun, with specific research and
targeting initiatives already underway for "best bet" markets.
Chloe Gordon, co-chair of Sudbury Tourism and executive manager
of the office of the CEO at Science North, says 88 per cent of
visitors to the city come from other parts of Ontario. Forty
per cent of overnight visitors come from northeastern Ontario
and 24 per cent from the Golden Horseshoe area of southern
Ontario.
This represents a key element for further marketing efforts,
says Gordon, referring to southern Ontario as the "bread and
butter" of Sudbury tourism.
Work has already begun reaching vast numbers of new Canadians
and minorities landing in southern Ontario a "huge untapped
market," with roughly 500,000 Chinese people in Greater Toronto
Area alone.
Television and newspaper representatives from the Chinese
culture were brought to Sudbury to sing the region's praises,
and have since delivered the message in their respective media
outlets. Sudbury Tourism has already followed this up by
purchasing advertising, with four more insertions scheduled in
the coming months.
In addition, more than 40 per cent of visitors to the city are
made up of visiting friends and family, says Gordon, making it
ever more important to increase citizens' awareness of
potential tourism offerings.
This kind of work complements the development of new tourism
packages to be made available online.
However, marketing alone cannot sustain visitor growth, says
Travelodge Hotel general manager Carla LaCelle. The increase
must also be partially driven by strengthening the
organizational development of Sudbury Tourism.
This means expanding the group's membership to become more
inclusive. Research has shown that there are more than 300
potential tourism members within the city, some of which may
lay beyond traditional ideas of tourism-related partners, says
LaCelle.
As a result, the group must consider reaching out to
educational institutions as well as various media and large
corporations, such as Vale Inco and Xstrata Nickel, who share a
need to promote the city as a good place to live and work.
Providing the partnership with additional sources of revenue is
also identified as a driving factor. Currently, funding for the
partnership stems largely from city budgets, to the annual sum
of $700,000.
However, Sault Ste. Marie has a destination marketing budget
roughly twice that of Sudbury, due to the presence of a three
per cent fee spread across local hotel accommodations. This is
an idea that Sudbury Tourism is going to "cautiously explore"
over the next year alongside new funding opportunities and
sponsorship alternatives, LaCelle says.
This article originally appeared on the Northern Ontario Business web site atwww.northernontariobusiness.com.
