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Published on : Thursday, February 18, 2021
To spur new ideas and to grow tourism experience in northern Ontario, a special edition mentorship and grant program has been launched.
The program is a joint venture with Designation Northern Ontario, Tourism Excellence North and the Ontario Tourism Innovation Lab. Program lead with Ontario Tourism Innovation Lab Justin Lafontaine said, “The goal is to encourage small business owners across the north to come forward with some new innovative ideas on how they might re-image or expand their tourism business or offerings to attract new markets and new visitors in response to the pandemic impacts and in regards to evolving travel landscapes going forward.”
Lafontaine said, “We have an amazing diversity in terms of who our applicants are as well as their ideas. We have had ideas about re-imaging space or venues in certain areas, creating new tourism experiences, new partnerships. We have a number of new indigenous tourism programming ideas and experience that were awarded and lots of others [like] culinary tourism, cultural tourism, you name it.”
This is the first time that the program has been open to the entire northern Ontario region with officials hoping to receive between 25 and 35 applicants.
“Three winners will be selected,” Lafontaine said. “Each will receive a $3,000 grant. They’ll be matched with a tourism mentor and they’ll receive additional in-kind services bundle from Tourism Excellence North valued at over $9,000.”
Three other businesses will also be coordinated with a mentor.
“We will also have three runners up who will receive another package of support through mentorship and through that Tourism Excellence North in-kind package,” Lafontaine said.
Tags: northern ontario