The Federal government provided the Canadian Tourism Commission with a one-time increase of $40 million to their marketing budget to be spent equally between domestic advertising programs and the development of priority international markets over the next two years. 

This is great news for Canada’s tourism industry. The federal government has recognized the need for this additional investment. It’s great to see the feds stepping up with additional dollars for strategic and tactical marketing programs to address emerging markets. Here is what Michele McKenzie, CTC President and CEO had to say:

International Markets

•  This strategic investment by the federal government recognizes that tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world and that further expansion of Canada’s tourism brand can increase tourism export revenues at home and provide stimulus to the economy at a critical time. Even in a turbulent year like 2008, tourism’s contribution to Canada’s GDP reached an estimated $30.7 billion, a 7.3% increase over 2007, and generated $22.2 billion in government revenues, up 5.7% over the previous year.
•  The stimulus package has provided us with an important economic opportunity to expand investment into high-growth emerging markets like India and Brazil.  These countries, both with a rapidly growing middle-class, booming economies and outward-bound potential, have grown at an impressive rate. Since 1995, India has grown on average 5.6% and Brazil at 4.6% compared to CTC’s overseas core markets at 0.5%. 
• We’re well-positioned to leverage our expertise to generate success in emerging economies due to Canada’s highly successful tourism brand, strong research capabilities, excellent strategies, and marketing and sales tools. Our tourism marketing has already had significant success in emerging markets such as Mexico and China and they now represent two of the potentially strongest growth markets in the CTC’s portfolio. 
• We also plan to expand the meetings, conventions and incentive travel (MC&IT) program globally, modeling our successful U.S. strategy that focuses on partnership development and on leveraging existing relationships with professional associations and organizations.
• We also look at mining the untapped potential in both our China and Mexico markets.

 Domestic Markets

• The stimulus funding will be used for a national advertising campaign to promote the entire country, rather than favouring specific regions. We will work with partners who have a national reach – such as hotels, car rental organizations, airlines, Parks Canada – to create an overarching national framework. Destination and private sector partners will be welcome to leverage this opportunity with parallel media investments within the scope of the national campaign. 
• Our goal is to inspire Canadians to explore their own country and make them aware of the truly extraordinary experiences, festivals and events that are available right on their doorstep – and to consider Canada first before planning a trip abroad. Keeping dollars at home will stimulate our tourism industry, especially benefiting SMEs.

Read more about Michele McKenzie’s response to what this means for the tourism industry -  Click here for the complete CTC story on the economic stimulus package - The federal budget, the CTC and Canada’s tourism industry.