In February, Jasper will host a new and much talked about Travel Alberta tourism training program.
SHiFT, which is already sold out for 2015, aims to educate Alberta businesses on the ins and outs of experiential travel and, according to Travel Alberta’s director of businesses development, Marty Eberth, it’s one of the programs the organization is most excited about.
The four-day conference is based on the Edge of the Wedge program offered out of Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland, and gives participants an in-depth look at how to harness the power of experiential travel.
Experiential travel pushes businesses to not just offer a service, but cater to the specific kind of people that they are most likely to serve. It uses a model that splits travellers into specific categories, and once a business identifies what category its customers fit into, pushes them to offer exactly what those people want.
“It all comes down to understanding what your traveller type is interested in—what is motivating them to come to your particular location,” Eberth explained, adding that SHiFT will take a deep dive into exactly how to find that out.
“It’s very in depth and intense. We’ve got [participants] for three and a half days, and they’re long days. We’re starting first thing in the morning and we’ve got them until eight or nine at night.”
Those days will consist of a combination of in-the-field experiences in and around Jasper and traditional training—where facilitators will talk about the principles of engaging travellers with experiential travel, give examples of what does and doesn’t work, and help participants figure out what they want to offer.
Eberth said the in-the-field experiences will reinforce the training.
“[Participants] will learn a little bit, they’ll go be part of an experience, and come back and talk about it, and how it impacted them, and maybe what they learned from that experience,” Eberth explained.
Travel Alberta is remaining tight-lipped on exactly what those experiences will be, but Eberth said that Jasper, with a plethora of experiences to offer, was the perfect place to unveil the new program.
A big part of the organization’s decision to begin the program’s three-year run in Jasper was, as well as the available experiences, the enthusiasm of Jasper’s tourism operators.
“We’ve had huge, huge support from our partnerships with different entities,” Eberth said, mentioning Parks Canada, Tourism Jasper, the Friends of Jasper National Park and the Municipality of Jasper. “They’ve all come together and been really, really supportive.”
She said that while Travel Alberta is excited to hold the program in Jasper, the town itself will also benefit.
“One of the benefits of the community hosting this is that there will be five new experiences developed within the community that are kind of left behind as a legacy of being the host,” she said.
While some of the experiences are the kind one would expect to see in Jasper, Eberth said others are a little less traditional. Those will be experiences developed with partners that might not be immediately obvious, and might offer a different way to experience Jasper.
“There will be some partnerships you will see with non-traditional businesses being involved. So that’s where the creation of something new comes out of this. And the intent is those experiences will be ready to go to market as soon as this summer.”
SHiFT will run from Feb. 10-13, and feature two of the “go-to” instructors in the world of experiential travel, Nancy Arsenault and Celes Daver.
The program is currently scheduled to run for three years, in three different towns, but Eberth said that she is confident that it will continue as long as interest stays at its current level.
If that happens, she said it’s likely Jasper will have a chance to host SHiFT again in the future.
Trevor Nichols
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