Canada’s tourism marketers have missed an opportunity to invite the country’s new majority population, the ethno-cultural communities, to visit their provinces for family holidays. Their continuing reluctance to do so will likely adversely affect the profitability of their tourism product for years to come.
A few years ago, my family and I were invited by the Nova Scotia Department of Tourism to spend a few weeks touring the province at their expense. The objective was to expose me to the many attributes of the province-its campgrounds, hotels, food, Halifax nightlife, its scenic beauty and all the other attractions that the province had marketed over the years to a primarily white North American audience.
A few weeks before taking the province up on its invitation, my advertising agency, Creative Concepts International in Montreal, was given a four-year contract to create advertising campaigns for Nova Scotia.
Before leaving for the Maritimes with my French-Canadian wife and two mulatto sons, I was told, in no uncertain terms, not to let anyone-especially the legislators in Halifax-know the true purpose of my visit. It was felt that it would be extremely embarrassing for the government of the time if word got out that a black Jamaican living in Montreal was the creative writer for Nova Scotia tourism advertising.
On our arrival in Halifax, my family and I were treated royally. We were given a map of the province identifying its campgrounds, hiking trails, scenic routes, restaurants and a list of hotels owned by the province, where my family and I could appreciate and enjoy the hospitality of the Nova Scotia government.
But lastly, and most important, we were provided with a brand-new, fully equipped motor home-with kitchen, washroom, dining area, bunks for my sons, a queen-size bed for my wife and I, and a pantry stocked with all the basics.
Those two weeks I spent touring the province with my family are still considered among the most enjoyable and memorable experiences of our lives. Watching my sons marvel at the outgoing tides and then sprinting to shore ahead of the incoming tides after a day of digging for clams with plastic buckets filled to the brim, is certainly a vision I will never forget. Cooking those clams in a broth of garlic butter and spices, still ranks as one of the best meals I have ever had.
The trips to Cape Breton, Lunenburg, and sailing on the Bluenose across Halifax harbour are all embedded in my memory.
The trip culminated in the creation of a series of award-winning campaigns for the province of Nova Scotia. In fact, the slogan my company penned-“Nova Scotia-there’s so much to Sea”-is still being talked about today.
Why am I sharing this experience with you? Simply because I have grown tired of hearing tourism officials in Ontario, Quebec and other provinces bemoan the fact that their numbers are down because “Fortress America,” with its grandiose plans to build walls around its empire, has frightened its citizens into staying home.
But has it really? Certainly it has not deterred black Americans from coming to Toronto in the thousands every summer for Caribana, filling every available hotel room in the city. It’s the way the provinces are marketing their tourism product that is creating the problem; the strategy has remained unchanged for decades.
I would venture to say that virtually every advertising dollar spent by the provinces is targeting a white North American market.
There are more than 80 million black and Hispanic Americans. It is quite likely most have never seen a Canadian tourism ad targeting their community. I am convinced they would enjoy spending their holidays in Canada as much as I do. But, they have not been invited. And the invitation has also not been extended to the millions of Canadians who make up our multicultural society.
Certainly the wonderful experience that my family and I had as tourists in Nova Scotia could be enjoyed equally by other members of Canada’s ethno-cultural communities. There are over one million Chinese, and an equal number of South Asians. Add to those Caribbean people, Hispanics, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Koreans, Sri Lankans; Tamils, Russians, Portuguese, Greeks, Italians, Polish, and you end up with a formidable market that enjoys a holiday just as much as you do.
The rapid demographic changes currently occurring in Canada are irreversible. There are burgeoning new markets out there with tremendous buying power. It is becoming increasingly obvious that an ongoing failure to recognize them as viable markets will be harmful to Canadian business.
Tourism is simply one of many industries likely to suffer as the U.S. continues to tighten its borders. It is high time for Canadian business leaders to look inward at the country’s new markets. It is not the colour of your customers’ skin that you should be concerned about-but rather the colour of their money.
Don Miller is president of Diversity Mar-keting Consultants in Toronto.
