New strategies planned to get Canadians traveling on home turf 

“Brown, boring, bureaucratic and awkward” is how Canadians perceive Parks Canada, according to one report by Colour Creative Persuasion Inc., the company hired to do research for Parks as it redesigns itself.

After learning the number of Canadian visitors to National Parks and Historic Sites was taking a downward trend, Parks Canada decided to examine why Canadians were less likely to pick places like Jasper as their holiday destination than before.

Information about the branding exercise was released in a news story at the end of October published by The Canadian Press, after it obtained documents under the Access to Information Act.

Carol Sheedy, director general of external relations and visitor experience, said “the results really indicated that we needed to refresh our brand in order to really attract the attention of Canadians... Some of the results that came in were that Parks Canada was not as colourful or dynamic as we thought. That people were still attached to National Parks and National Historic Sites but were not really the first choice as a destination for travel.”

To realign the Parks Canada brand with Canadian holiday destinations, Sheedy said it needed “to be more dynamic, more active and become places where people could come and create experiences that would be memorable.”

The challenge for Parks, Sheedy said, is working out how to translate its ideas into marketable products, messages and images, which is what Parks is working on now. “We’re pulling together many sources of information and we’re engaged in the planning of how we’re going to implement the new brand,” she said. “There are many facets to that.”

According to Sheedy, the new brand will have National Parks and Historic Sites represented in a “welcoming manner,” designed to make people feel they have a place within these areas. Instead of gorgeous vistas of the country, Parks hopes to draw people in by showing them the “many ways they can have an experience in a National Park,” Sheedy said. The images of Canada’s National Parks and Historic Sites will no longer be sweeping landscapes, but images of people taking part in outdoor recreational activities.

Parks Canada staff will also have a new lesson or two coming their way. They will receive training about “service standards on how to facilitate a visitor experience, to share the knowledge that we have on National Parks and National Historic Sites” she said.  This way, the general public will be able to discover new places within the Parks that they would not normally think about.

Rumours of a television campaign have been reported by national media, but Sheedy denied any plans thus far. “We’re not there yet, we’re really looking at renewing... our visual product,” she said.

International tourists have not been forgotten, Sheedy said. Parks is working closely with the Canadian Tourism Commission to emphasize the “presence of visitors and people having experiences in different parts of the Canadian tourism product,” Sheedy said. 

Parks Canada will continue working with its partners, including the Municipality of Jasper, to offer packages and experiences to the public. While there is no date set for implementation, Sheedy said the organization plans to introduce different elements as quickly as possible. “I would say March, April you will see some visual expressions in vacation planners and advertising starting to come out,” Sheedy said. “Initiatives that require more thought or planning will probably be rolled out in the months after that.”

Jasper National Park is being represented at the federal level by two representatives from Western Canada, who will poll opinions and input the information into the committee responsible for the plan that is guiding the re-brand of Parks Canada.

These new ideas, coupled with the previous update of Parks Canada’s logo and uniform should mean a positive change in the way people perceive Jasper, and with that hopefully increased tourism. No Canadian should miss out on a visit to a place like Jasper, according to Sheedy, which she calls a “destination of choice, the dream of a lifetime for people.”