travelmanitoba

13 P R O G R E S S R E P O R T 2 0 21/ 2 2 CONCLUSION The Northern Manitoba Tourism Strategy 2017-2022, created a five-year plan to support the growth of tourism in northern Manitoba. Under the guidance of the Northern Tourism Advisory Committee, Travel Manitoba has made considerable progress in advancing the Northern Tourism Strategy. While the effects of the pandemic made it impossible to achieve the initial goal of increasing tourism spending in northern Manitoba to $151 million by March 2022, significant progress was made in all the strategic priority areas, including: • Creating targeted marketing campaigns and new content development (blog posts, videos, photos), and visitor guides to promote northern destination areas. • Completing destination area assessments for northern Manitoba to identif y gaps and priorities. • Improving community engagement scores in the DestinationNext assessment over a four-year period. • Launching place brands for Flin Flon, Thompson and The Pas / OCN. ↑  York Factory • Supporting the expansion of Churchill's tourism season through the winter with the promotion of northern lights experiences. • Supporting the development and implementation of a Northern Snowmobile Tourism Strategic Plan. Progress in these areas helped Northern Manitoba's tourism sector build resiliency and weather the pandemic. Travel Manitoba will work with the Northern Tourism Advisory Committee to launch a new Northern Tourism Strategy in 2022/23 that aligns with the updated Manitoba Tourism Strategy. An updated Manitoba Tourism Strategy was launched in early 2021 to mitigate economic and business losses in Manitoba's tourism industry resulting from the pandemic. New targets were set to rebuild the visitor economy to 2019 levels by 2024 and generate sustainable long-term growth for Manitoba's visitor economy with a target to grow visitor spending levels by 50 per cent in 2030 compared to 2019. PH OTO : T H E B RI G AD E

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