The metamorphosis is complete at Jim Irwin’s farm.
A few years ago, the Manitoba cattle producer began looking for ways to supplement the income on his 720-acre spread near Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park.
The idea he came up with? Tourism.
“I think there is really a tremendous opportunity to expand the eco-tourism and ag tourism industries in Manitoba,” said Irwin, who has since sold his herd of 110 cows and now serves as president of the Manitoba Country Vacations Association.
“It’s a little bit scary at first (making the shift from farming to tourism) but we made the transition gradually and it worked out pretty well.
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“We’re a small capacity operator and we’re very happy with that, being able to offer a personalized experience to a very specific clientele.”
Irwin’s operation, the Riding Mountain Guest Ranch, is among a growing number of rural or farm-based tourism operations in Western Canada.
The Irwin ranch, based at Lake Audy, Man., specializes in wildlife safaris and guided wilderness tours.
Where cattle once grazed, Irwin now leads groups of international visitors seeking a once-in-a-lifetime Canadian wilderness get-away.
Guest packages include accommodations in a character country home, fresh home-cooked meals and access to a veranda, sunroom, fireplace, piano, hot tub, winter sauna, billiards room, audio-visual system, natural history library, wildlife viewing blinds, canoes and kayaks, hiking trails and cross-country ski trails.
The guided tours are the highlight, offering frequent sightings of moose, elk, deer, black bear, coyotes, foxes, lynx and other species common to the area.
Also included are expert commentaries on wildlife ecology provided by Irwin, who has an undergraduate degree in wildlife and resource management and also completed a doctoral thesis on wildlife disease.
Since jumping into the tourism industry, Irwin has learned a lot about the business.
As president of the MCVA, he said rural tourism operators are becoming more numerous and more sophisticated in the types of packages they offer.
Some operators cater to urban clients who want to experience farm life and see farm animals such as horses, cows, pigs and goats. Others cater to hunters who visit the area looking for deer or waterfowl.
The hunters, often from the United States or other parts of Canada, usually require accommodation and the assistance of farmers or outfitters who know the area, are familiar with other landowners, and can acquire access rights and hunting privileges on behalf of their clients.
“Our MCVA members vary from people that offer nature tours for school groups, to people who offer stays on their farm so visitors can get an idea of what the farming life is like,” said Irwin.
“Some are involved in hunting, we have one member who specializes in fly fishing and we have a number that run rural bed and breakfasts.”
John Tasker’s ag tourism venture at Rosthern, Sask., caters specifically to horse lovers.
His farm, the Willow Creek Guest Ranch, is located along the South Saskatchewan River near the Batoche National Historic Site, about 60 kilometres north of Saskatoon.
The ranch offers tours on horseback and gives visitors a chance to ride on the historic Carlton Trail in an area where Metis leader Louis Riel led an armed rebellion against federal forces in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885.
Tour packages include rustic accommodations in A-frame cabins, guided trail rides on horseback, campfire meals and nightly entertainment, including cowboy stories under the stars.
Visitors also get breathtaking views of the river and experience life as it might have been more than a century ago in a historic, western settlement.
Tasker, a rancher and trucker by trade, said running a guest ranch seemed like a good way to supplement his farming income.
“We came up with the idea about four years ago and started working on it over the winter,” said Tasker.
“It still isn’t where we’d like it to be but it’s come a long way in the last three years. We’re actually starting to stretch our season up to four or five months if you include the spring and fall seasons, so it’s building up slowly.
“It’s a nice supplement for us and we also employ a couple of people, so it’s creating some jobs as well.”
Tasker, who has worked on some of the biggest ranches in Western Canada, said the idea of offering horseback excursions to wannabe cowboys is nothing new.
“A lot of the big ranches in B.C. used to do this kind of thing on the side,” he said.
When guests arrive at Willow Creek, they have access to more than 5,500 acres of land including 4,000 in a Batoche-area game preserve controlled by Parks Canada.
Tasker’s clientele includes riders from across Canada and Europe, as well as South Korean and Japanese foreign exchange students.
According to Ted Hornung, manager of international marketing at Tourism Saskatchewan, the demand for agri-tourism products like Tasker’s has outstanding growth potential.
“What we are seeing is a genuine interest among international guests in experiencing what it is like to be a rancher at a deeper level,” Hornung said.
“They want to participate in cattle drives, check the cows and calves in the pastures. They wish to integrate a personal enrichment quality with their holiday … (and in) order to achieve that, they almost have to immerse themselves into somebody else’s world. And the ranching lifestyle is perceived as being wholesome.”
But while many farmers, ranchers and rural landowners have the resources to offer unique tourism packages, generating income from their ideas is not always easy.
According to Irwin, one of the biggest challenges facing rural tourism is marketing.
In many cases, tour operators have identified a marketable product but lack the marketing experience required to reach potential clients.
Irwin, for example, spent several years cultivating contacts in the tourism industry, both domestically and abroad, before zeroing in on his current client base, which consists primarily of European tourists and wildlife photographers from the United States.
The Riding Mountain Guest Ranch is now marketed abroad through Canadian-based inbound operators, who visit Canadian tourist operations, assess the quality of the experience being offered and decide if the operator should be listed and sold through overseas tourist agencies.
Today, Irwin’s tour packages are listed with tourism agencies in the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland and several other European countries.
“The inbound operators are companies that have a long-standing record of performance in the industry,” said Irwin.
“They are essentially bringing in business for the tour operator and taking a percentage commission from the retail price.”
Irwin said it is critical that ag-tourism operators recognize the importance of marketing and develop a plan that suits their operation.
Effective tour packaging, for example, can have a huge impact on tourism income as can cross-promotions involving other rural tour operators.
“I think the biggest problem with eco-tourism or ag-tourism is that you’re … remotely located and you’re obviously not going to have the traffic going by your front door.
“The whole idea of eco-tourism or rural tourism is still fairly nebulous. You know there’s a market for it but how can you reach that market?”
Irwin said the key to success is to develop a good product, identify a client base, create a good marketing plan and work co-operatively with tourism associations and other individual operators.
“The more members that are involved, the better the job that can be done in marketing.”
Like Irwin, Tasker said that getting the word out to potential customers can be a challenge.
Willow Creek recently developed a website to attract more clients but has been relying mainly on word of mouth and referrals from a local stable that offers arena riding but does not have trail riding programs.
Tasker said his relationship with the stable illustrates how separate businesses can provide complementary services.
Ensuring that clients leave satisfied is also a key consideration.
Tasker, for example, has learned to temper the requests of urban clients who have plenty of ambition when they arrive but little or no riding experience.
“Some of our clients have suggested overnight excursions on the trail but usually, people who spend a few hours on the trail are happy to get back to the conveniences of home,” he said.
“Sometimes visitors might think they want a totally wilderness experience but when it comes right down to it, the reality out there doesn’t quite match the romantic idea that they have in their heads.
“For a lot of people, especially people from Korea and Japan, it’s a brand new experience so they don’t really know what to expect.
“With the language barrier, it’s sometimes hard to know exactly what they’re thinking but they keep coming back so that must be a good sign.”
