The trend toward closer-to-home, day-trip getaways and a push for people to connect with their past are some of the latest tourism crazes, and Manitoba rural businesses want to cash in on the ride.
Their approach is co-operative marketing through agri-tourism networks, and the numbers show it’s paying off.
“These agri-tourism networks are linking together in a joint effort to bring people into their community,” Manitoba Agriculture home economist Joy Lorette told a conference on direct farm marketing here.
“We see the strongest need now in packaging tours, especially with the Pan Am Games coming up.”
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Tourism co-operatives are active in four regions of the province.
To draw visitors they’re focussing on a recent trend that shows people want to get back to simpler ways of doing things.
“Nostalgia is back in,” said Lorette, who works in Steinbach.
Boosting rural tourism is a big part of the province’s vision for growth in that sector. Manitoba Industry, Trade and Tourism is setting up an agri-tourism plan geared toward inexpensive getaways to the countryside.
Recent statistics show people aren’t leaving the province as much for holidays, said Lorette.
Manitoba Agriculture is doing most of the work getting rural tourism networks established. When Industry, Trade and Tourism sees the initiative of rural business leaders, Lorette predicts the department will fund a new staff position to work with the new co-operatives, set up bus and group tours and oversee a provincial rural tourism plan.
It all starts with the rural businesses themselves. According to Rudy Reimer, who owns a Christmas tree farm near Steinbach, the drive and desire to work together to sell Manitoba’s rural communities is there.
“By pooling resources, it’s possible to sell a region to the public,” Reimer, a member of the Southeast Tourism Network, told the crowd.
The network covers a 40-kilometre radius around Steinbach and includes such businesses as golf courses, snowmobile tour companies, tea rooms, craft shops and garden tours.
Tourist guide
The $100 membership fee covered the cost of a pamphlet the group put together to be distributed as a tourist’s guide to the region.
“The effort paid off and we were nominated for the Manitoba Travel Award for outstanding community partnership,” said Reimer, who had close to 5,000 visitors to his tree farm last season.
Lorette said once resources are in place, the province will look at establishing quality assurance standards for businesses who want to join the tourism co-operatives.
