Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member’s statement earlier today in regard to some of our other industries that do provide revenues to our economy but have never been really given the strong support that they’ve needed up until, I guess, this government has really made some significant impacts into the marketing area.
I’d like to ask the Minister of Tourism, now that we’ve come to the end of the summer and we usually get an influx of tourists in the Northwest Territories, and winter is coming around the corner and we have our northern lights as a big factor, what kind of support is he giving to our regional centres to continue to promote tourism into the regional communities?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a very strong and capable team at Northwest Territories Tourism. We have dedicated staff at the regional level through ITI who provide support to tourism operators and the licensing aspect. We have seen numbers continue to increase, and the Member is correct; when we came into office almost four years ago, we increased the marketing budget for tourism, and I believe that those efforts back then are now starting to pay dividends with the increased number of visitors from Asia, from the United States and domestically from here in Canada.
I know the Member spoke during his Member’s statement about increased visitation in the Inuvik region. We’re happy to see that. We have to continue to try to get funding out to the regions, and we have earmarked funding for the regions across the territory. We have the Northwest Territories Tourism annual general meeting coming up in November, and I think we’re looking at this very positively, and our efforts also in Asia are paying tremendous dividends. If you look around here in Yellowknife, it’s very evident the amount of tourists that you see on airplanes, at the airport, on the streets and in hotels. We’re seeing a new hotel being constructed across the street from the Legislature, a couple of new restaurants, and expansion to the Explorer Hotel. All the signs are there that that investment four years ago is paying huge dividends for us here.
I know here in Yellowknife we always see a really high increase of tourism and a lot of the dollars, as the Minister mentioned, some of the new restaurants and hotels going up here in Yellowknife. However, when you take it to the regions, you see there are a lot of vacancies in some of the hotels, and the hotels not doing as good a business as the capital here.
I know we did give funding and marketing dollars out to all the ITI regional offices. Can I ask the Minister, did all the regional offices use up all those extra funds? I think it was in the amount of maybe about $50,000 extra for each regional office. Did they all use up those marketing funds, and if not, would those funds be possibly used to create some kind of marketing strategy for the winter months?
I can get the information for the Member on the $50,000 and how it was spent in each of our regions and where it went. I can provide that to him. We have to look back at the Economic Opportunities Strategy and our focus on diversifying the economy here in the Northwest Territories. Certainly, tourism is one area last year, I believe, it was somewhere near $120 million to our economy here in the Northwest Territories. It has the opportunity, and I’ve said before in the House, to have an impact in every one of our communities across the territory, so it’s important that we have the requisite funding.
We’ve seen some big successes, as well, in Aboriginal tourism, the cultural component. The Destination Deline is a good example of that effort. Our Aboriginal Tourism Champions Advisory Council was formed. These are folks who have experience in the cultural component and are helping us build the Aboriginal tourism product here in the Northwest Territories that we believe is going to bring in even more visitors to the Northwest Territories.
I understand with the Minister mentioning that in November we’re going to be having our tourism AGM and we’ll possibly be bringing in some of our regional community members who work in the tourism industry.
I wonder if the Minister would be looking at the projects that have been going on by the regions and looking at whether or not we will be increasing our marketing or our operation dollars for some of these tourism operators moving into the next fiscal year, if that’s something that he’d be looking into at this AGM.
I believe we need to back what is working, and for the Northwest Territories, certainly Aurora is working, our Aboriginal tourism product is growing, and we believe that’s going to work as well. So we have to continue to back what is being successful. I believe we have tremendous opportunity here in the Northwest Territories to market the products that we have to audiences around the world. The next government hopefully will continue on the same path this government has had, and that is to invest in marketing our tourism, our products. These things have to be marketed and nobody’s going to do that for us. We have to get out there and look for partnerships. We’ve worked with Destination Canada, we’ve worked with TIAC, and we’ll continue to seek out partnerships to promote the Northwest Territories both nationally and internationally.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When we get tourists up in the Northwest Territories here we want to give them a good experience, give them a taste of northern hospitality, and if there is not too much tourism opportunity in some of the regions during the winter months, it is a great opportunity to provide other training opportunities such as customer service, possibly getting other people to look at how to create a tourism business licence, do proposal writing, reports, those kinds of things of that nature, administrative work.
Would the Minister commit to possibly creating some kind of training opportunities manual for our tourism operators so that when the summertime comes around again and we get a high increase of tourism in the Northwest Territories, that we are ready to give our visitors a taste of our northern hospitality here in the Northwest Territories?
We’re not going to have a successful tourism industry here in the Northwest Territories unless we’ve got dedicated, trained front-line staff providing the services to the visiting public. It was highlighted in the Economic Opportunities Strategy the need for tourism training, and we’re undertaking that. We’ve dedicated some funding for tourism-related training, and again, we’re working with the Northwest Territories Tourism, our tour operators around the Northwest Territories to get this training in place and get as many folks trained in providing quality customer service to the travelling public here in the NWT.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
