Initiative

You can’t be everything to everyone. It’s the hardest thing for a municipalities to do: choose….focus. For smaller communities, only 1-2 products are differentiated enough to motivate the couch potatoes to de-root themselves and visit you, or visit you amidst a world of choice. A greater than three-hour distance to major regional tourism markets (Winnipeg, Saskatoon) informed a key tourism insight: the further the distance to markets, the greater the product differentiation needs to be to motivate someone to travel for the experience. And if people need to drive further, the product needs to be better than closer competition. The result is a realistic Swan Valley Tourism Development Plan that focuses on trails-based product differentiation – with pursuit of product development enhancement of its existing snowmobiling product, and development of a lesser-known but differentiating trails-based summer product. An identified strategic role as a tourism support services centre generates a number of supporting community development actions – including quality of place recommendations and industry development/investment opportunities. A marketing campaign that cheekily asks people to Get Out…side….and get back to nature’s ways is designed to break through the information noise barrier that prevents most marketing from motivating desired tourism consumer behavior.