Destination Canada’s new tourism tagline is ‘For Glowing Hearts’ – and what better day to introduce it to the Australian travel industry than on Canada Day, Monday 1 July, when Canada celebrated the 152nd anniversary of its federation.
Dozens of trade partners gathered at Sydney’s stylish est restaurant on Canada Day to share stories of Canada with top Canada tourism companies and Donna Campbell, managing director of Destination Canada’s Australian GSA, DC & Associates Worldwide.
Canada’s new tourism tagline comes with a distinctive heart-shaped logo rooted in the country’s bold red and white iconography. (See below.)
It’s inspired by the country’s national anthem, O Canada, which includes the lines:
“With glowing hearts we see thee rise, The True North strong and free!”
‘For Glowing Hearts’ is part of a new tourism strategy designed to help boost international visits to Canada during non-peak seasons. The idea is to lift tourist intake by more than a million people and get visitors to see the country beyond Canada’s biggest cities.
Tourism authorities in Australia (a country often compared to Canada in many ways) are also trying to lure tourists out of the cities and into the regions.
Polar bear duo
Canada’s new plan includes CAD 58.5 million (AUD 68.3 million) over two years to help communities create or improve tourism facilities and experiences.
“Just over three out of four international visitors travel only to Canada’s largest provinces, Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec, and most go to their biggest cities: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal,” the new strategy states.
“Drawing tourists to venture beyond the big cities remains a challenge for regions that want to expand their visitor economies.”
Donna Campbell, managing director of DC & Associates Worldwide, Sydney
Tourism is a mainstay of the Canadian economy, generating CAD 102 billion in annual economic activity, supporting 1.8 million jobs and accounting for over 2% of gross domestic product.
Campbell told her audience that travellers today wanted more than an experience – they wanted to be transformed and moved.
There’s a great one-minute clip that gives the message:
Much mention was made of Come from Away, the Canadian musical sweeping the world and opening this month in Melbourne. Come from Away is set in the week following the September 11 attacks on New York. It tells the true story of what transpired when 38 planes were ordered to land unexpectedly in the small town of Gander in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, as part of Operation Yellow Ribbon.
The characters in the musical are based on (and in most cases share the names of) real Gander residents as well as some of the 7000 stranded travellers they housed and fed.
Air Canada general manager Australia and New Zealand, Vic Naughton, reminded his travel industry audience that expansion of the airline’s Pacific network, which now includes non-stop services to Vancouver from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, continued this year when a fourth weekly Melbourne departure came online in June.
Next up for Air Canada is a new seasonal service from Auckland, set to launch in December.
All flights are timed to conveniently connect in Vancouver with Air Canada services to more than 120 destinations across Canada and the United States, including New York-Newark.
A surprise for many Australian travellers is that Air Canada offers one of the fastest and most convenient ways to reach the US east coast. US-bound passengers arriving at Vancouver Airport (YVR – which has been voted North America’s Best International Airport for the past nine years) can pass seamlessly through an uncrowded and friendly US Customs – a pleasant surprise for anyone who’s entered North America via a US port like Los Angeles.
Additionally, Australians continuing on to a US city need not collect their bags until they reach their final destination. Air Canada operates Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner or Boeing 777 aircraft on all of its Pacific routes.
Canada Day lunch at est in Sydney
Other sponsors at the lunch on Monday included Travel Manitoba. On the edge of the Arctic, Churchill, Manitoba is known as the polar bear capital of the world. When it comes to drawcards, you can’t beat polar bears.
In British Columbia, visitors can now sleep in a pod or on a mountainside. Loosely inspired by Tokyo’s capsule hotels, Whistler’s new Pangea Pod Hotel is ideal for solo travellers with an eye on budget. Located in the heart of the Village and half the price of conventional hotel rooms, Pangea has eight custom suites containing a total of 88 independent sleeping pods, including a female-only suite.
The northern lights are one of the Yukon’s biggest winter attractions. But what’s there to do when you’re waiting for the lights to come out?
Options include Dogsledding (whip along snowy trails, through snow-covered valleys and across frozen rivers led by a pack of energetic huskies pulling a sled); Fat Biking (thick, oversized tyres); and Ice Fishing, said to be one of the world’s ultimate fishing experiences – just don’t fall in.
Written by Peter Needham
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