The Tourism Industry of Nova Scotia (TIANS) held its 40th annual Tourism Summit from November 26-28 in Halifax. This year’s theme was tourism impact.
Tourism Nova Scotia’s (TNS) CEO, Michele Saran, gave the afternoon keynote address on Monday, November 27, sharing year-to-date September 2017 performance updates and highlighting some of the year’s accomplishments across the tourism industry.
Performance updates
The numbers tell a fantastic story: As of the end of September, we’ve welcomed nearly 2 million non-resident overnight visitors to the province, which is 9 per cent more compared to last year. Preliminary estimates suggest tourism revenues will reach $2.7 billion dollars by the end of the year—that’s $100 million more than last year, and $700 million more than just three years ago. More 2017 performance indicators are available online.
New strategic plan announced
Michele also announced the release of TNS’s five-year strategic plan: Growing Export Revenue, which expands on the strategic framework we’ve been talking about since 2015 when TNS was first created.
Our industry’s future
The keynote highlighted innovative tourism ventures and success stories across the province, and concluded by looking to the future. Michele shared her admiration for Rick Antonson, former president and CEO of Tourism Vancouver, and a concept he promotes called cathedral thinking—the idea of working on a project that you may never see finished, for the benefit of future generations. It’s about shared ambition and doing meaningful things that will have a lasting impact in the long-term.
Michele urged Nova Scotia’s tourism industry to embrace cathedral thinking and ask the question “What if…?” What might our industry look like in decades to come? She shared this concluding “What If…?” video to inspire all of us to be leaders and change agents for the benefit of Nova Scotia.
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