Canada Has A lot to Offer…

It’s a big world out there! With almost 200 countries, and many options within each one for tourists, the choices for travel are almost endless!

But even with all of these choices, in 2017, Canada was named the top tourist destination by Lonely Planet (the most popular guidebook publisher in Canada).

Watch the video below to see what they chose to highlight about Canada. Have you seen any of these great things for yourself?

Do you consider the sites they showed in the video to be the best parts of Canada? What have they forgotten to highlight?  

What Makes a Tourist?

How far away from home do you have to travel to be a tourist? Would you be a tourist if you travelled to British Columbia? Michigan? New York State? How about Toronto or Ottawa?

Being a tourist is decided just as much by the activities you undertake as it is by the location you find yourself in. For example, visiting a historic site like a fort in your own hometown may make you a tourist.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a tourist is someone who “makes a tour for pleasure or culture”. By this definition, you could be a tourist at a cottage very near to your house.

Tourist Destinations

So if anyone can be a tourist, what makes a good tourist site?

Locations need to fulfill a number of criteria in order to be considered tourist destinations. While they can be either natural or cultural locations, they must each satisfy the same criteria. The list below is adapted from Tourism Excellence.

Remember that not all destinations fall within the same category, but they do need to satisfy these criteria. In Unit 1, Activity 1, you looked at different types of tourism, including ecotourism, adventure travel, cultural, medical, religious, agritourism, relaxation and sports tourism. You can revisit this activity in order to refresh your memory on what constitutes these different types of tourism. Some destinations may score lower on some of these criteria because of the type of destination that they are (i.e., An adventure travel activity, such as mountain climbing, might score lower in access, as you may have to hike for days to reach the base of the mountain because there are no other options).

Building a Tourist Destination

Sometimes tourist locations have obvious established attractions - like the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls - and sometimes, they have to do a bit of work to develop as attractions.

Single Track Yukon

On Montana Mountain in the Yukon, which is owned by the Carcross/Tagish First Nations, the community has manufactured its own attraction.

This community had a vision of how they could attract tourists while respecting and protecting their traditional lands. They considered what activities would have low impact and were suited to the landscape. In 2006, a small group of Carcross/Tagish First Nations teenagers were asked to spend the summer building mountain bike trails on the mountain. This was hard work - moving dirt, shoveling, removing roots, and building bridges - but they loved it. Year after year, new teenagers from the community joined the crew, and as of 2016 there were 65 kilometers of trails criss-crossing the mountain.

To hear from the Carcross/Tagish youth yourself, watch this video:

Mountain bikers from around the world have started visiting this destination because of the world class trails. Now, an estimated 5000 visitors travel to the Yukon annually to ride.

As the number of visitors has grown, the community had to consider things like lodging, transportation, restaurants, bike rentals, and many more needs that the tourists would have when they arrived in order to ensure that they had an enjoyable vacation and to ensure that they promoted the experience to their friends.

As an aside, the project has also contributed to the well-being (economic and psychological) of the community, and has provided meaningful employment for teens who would otherwise be unemployed.

Check out this article, "The New Yukon Gold Rush: Mountain Biking" from outsideonline.com for more info. (Original article)

Looking at your Local Tourism Situation

The rest of this activity will be spent looking at the tourism situation in your own town/area. You may or may not have spent much time previously thinking about what your town/area looks like to visitors. For some towns/areas in Ontario, it may be obvious. If you live in Niagara Falls, Toronto or Muskoka, you may have a summer job that caters to the tourism industry. If you live in a smaller or more remote location, the tourism sector might be less developed.

After completing the task above, you are well prepared to act as an ambassador for your community!