Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to commend the government on their Spectacular NWT promotion through ITI. I have a question for the Minister of ITI. Is this program a multi-year program and promotion?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. David Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, it is.
As I indicated, I do believe this is a good program. Does the government have some sort of evaluation process in place of how beneficial this program will be and how they will evaluate the results from the promotions?
With a marketing initiative like that you don’t see the results until sometimes two and three years down the road. Certainly one of the evaluation criteria is the number of visitors that end up coming to visit the Northwest Territories and those numbers are easily tracked.
I would like the Minister to maybe consider, or my question would be: Would the department look at creating some sort of evaluation process now so that you have a benchmark to compare your results for the next two or three years? I understand that it’s difficult to evaluate some of that stuff, but you have to have a benchmark that you’re comparing to for two or three years. Would the Minister commit to that?
Certainly, we have a number of sectors when it comes to our tourism that we have here in the Northwest Territories. When I spoke of statistics, we keep track of all the different sectors, whether it’s aurora viewing, fishing, hunting, general touring, outdoor adventure and things of that nature. We do have adequate statistics, which again, as we move forward with a marketing initiative like the Spectacular NWT, we will be able to two or three years down the road see where marketing initiatives like that may or may not have had an impact.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My final question is about the tour operators and how they will be involved in this promotion and can get involved in this Spectacular NWT.
Industry’s involvement is through the Northwest Territories Tourism. They have a board of directors there. They’re actively involved in the tourism industry here in the Northwest Territories. They do a great job marketing tourism here in the Northwest Territories to both tourists in North America and around the world.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
