BY COLE RIVARD
for northern life
Tourists who speak French may be surprised to learn they can feel right at home in Ontario. The new Ontario's 2006 Francophone Tourism Guide is designed to communicate that message.
“Our goal is to make Ontario a more appealing destination for francophone tourists by identifying some key areas and events that occur within Ontario that are supporting the French-language community," said Guylaine Scherer, a spokesperson for Direction Ontario.
“We will be presenting a new division for francophone tourism called Direction Ontario that we are trying to bring forward into the market,”
Direction Ontario is a new division of Destination Nord de l'Ontario, a tourist-information organization designed to promote French-language tourism in Northern Ontario. Direction Ontario will provide tourist information about francophone-friendly destinations throughout the province.
Ontario’s 2006 Francophone Tourism Guide was launched in Sudbury last week at Le Grand Rendez-vous, a province-wide tourism conference that provided tourism associations with opportunities to break into the francophone market by developing new marketing strategies.
The guide outlines major francophone and bilingual tourist events and destinations that may be of interest to the French-language community.
“It seems strange that many business owners are trying to corner, say, the German market or the Japanese market, but in a bilingual province they aren’t doing enough to support the second language,” Scherer said.
“With this initiative, we are hoping to convince those in the French-speaking community to come to Ontario instead of touring, for example, Newfoundland. Our main goal is to make the industry more accessible for the francophone market.”
And although Scherer believes that Ontario still has a long way to go to effectively corner a part of the French market, she does believe that Sudbury has managed to push itself in the right direction
“I think that Sudbury is on the right path for gaining French-speaking tourists,” Scherer said. “It is a region that has been quite receptive in that regard, particularly with attractions such as Science North and Dynamic Earth who maintain the cultural diversity of both French- and English-speaking communities.”
For more information on the services provided by either Direction Ontario or Destination Nord de l'Ontario, call 1-877-OUI-Nord, or visit them online at www.destinationnord.ca.
