Hotelier June 2022

LESSONS
Learned
Knowing the tourism
industry helped Marsha
Walden with the transition
to her role of president and
CEO of Destination Canada.
She was able to bring her
experience in leading
transformative strategy
to drive the work the
association does now and
in the future. “We have a
new aspiration for our sector
and a new direction our
organization that
will support greater
industry vitality and
business profitability,”
says Walden.
eager to restore their hosting
economies. What’s more, we
must show travellers that it is
easy to come here, and easy
to travel within Canada.”
Central to a full recovery,
she insists, is restoring
business travel. To that end,
DC’s Business Events team
is working with city DMOs
across the country to ensure
Canada has a dominant
presence in global trade
shows for business-event
planners. In addition, DC
has a targeted sales-andmarketing
program to lure
meetings and incentive
business through C-suite
decision-makers in six of
Canada’s key growth sectors.
CHANGE MAKERS
“Our team is incredibly
dedicated to our work and
our industry, so they were
acutely aware of the severe
challenges facing our partners
and the tourism businesses,”
says Walden. “I feel our team
members stayed very focused
on the work they needed to do
to support our industry, rather
than the changing landscape
of our office culture.”
Externally, she says her
team worked “exceedingly
hard” to freely share information
with partners, engage
in regular industry-wide
dialogue as events unfolded,
plan and re-plan together,
and worry together.
“The breadth of our team’s
industry experience and
the depth of personal ties
between our team and our
sector partners has been vital
to getting through this.”
Internally, DC quickly
launched a Business Resilience
Team to work with human
resources to ensure its employees
immediately had the tools
they needed to work effectively
from home and, over time,
had the physical and emotional
supports and programs they
needed to stay healthy.
“Personally, as a leader who
was new to the organization,
I focused on connecting with
people and ensuring there
was clarity in our direction,
culture and strategy,” reflects
Walden, adding while online
meetings worked quite well,
she was eager to finally meet
more people in person.
LOOKING FORWARD
“While the last two years
have been unimaginably
difficult for the industry, it's
also given us an opportunity
as an industry to reflect
on what we want for the
sector, for tourism businesses
and employees, and for
Canadians, in the future,”
says Walden, “Like all
destinations, we know that
challenges remain. We’re still
faced with some significant
hurdles to overcome as we
re-build — including labour
shortages, air and ground
transportation, and rising
costs, to name a few.”
DC’s goal is to re-build
Canada’s tourism sector in a
way that is more profitable
and more resilient. Walden
says that means making our
destinations more attractive
to both visitors and investors.
“We also need to attract
talented people to our sector
and build their careers
in tourism.”
Over the longer-term, the
association is striving for
tourism growth that generates
wealth and wellbeing for
Canadians while enriching
the lives of guests — increasing
business prosperity,
strengthening socio-cultural
vibrancy, and lifting environmental
sustainability.
DC has already scored a
number of major wins over
the past year.
“For starters, we became
much more agile as an organization
and were able to quickly
shift our marketing efforts to
wherever the best opportunity
for industry ROI surfaced,”
says Walden. “Initially,
this meant making a major
marketing shift to a domestic
audience, which had been the
purview of only provincial and
city DMOs in the past, but
which was critical to industry
survival in 2020 and 2021. We
were asked to step in. Domestic
travel has been the saving
grace for a large proportion of
tourism operators, both here
in Canada and in every part
of the world. Looking ahead,
maintaining the desire of
Canadians to spend on domestic
travel will be important to
long-term industry resilience.”
Another key achievement
for DC was the manner
in which the association
strengthened its partnerships.
“We’re strong believers in the
power of collaboration as a
competitive advantage. As a
nation, our tourism ecosystem
is more integrated than
ever. We now have deeper
relationships with destination-marketing
organizations
across the country, with our
airports, with global airlines,
and with Canadian government
agencies around the
world. We worked hard to
supply our sales and marketing
partners — in travel
trade, travel media, business
events and incentive travel
— with insightful market
data, new tools, cross-Canada
product knowledge,
and innovative approaches
designed for a new travel
mind-set and a changed
travel marketplace. We have
also had good success in
aligning partners with our
focus on high-value guests
— those travellers who have
the capacity to spend more
time and money when they
visit and whose values align
with our Canada brand,
having a deeper interest in
truly knowing a place and its
people.”
Finally, she says her team
set a higher aspiration for the
industry’s future and re-defined
the association’s long-term
yardstick for success. While
economic measures remain
important to gauge the vitality
of our industry, Walden
says DC is incorporating
holistic measures of the net
benefits that tourism brings to
Canadian communities, such
as socio-culturally, environmentally,
and economically, to
secure a more resilient future
for the sector by building a
regenerative hosting economy.
“While we know that
uncertainty and challenges
lie ahead, we are poised for
recovery. Canada has what
the world wants — lively
cities wrapped in nature,
spectacular wilderness and
coastlines, a unique mosaic
of Indigenous and global
cultures, and welcoming
people ready to host our
guests with open hearts.”◆
16 | JUNE 2022
hoteliermagazine.com