The Tourism Industry Association of PEI (TIAPEI) is launching a new and strategic focus on cultural tourism, with assistance from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) and the Province of Prince Edward Island.
The project, known as “The PEI Cultural Heritage Corridor,” will package the Island’s heritage, arts, cuisine, and natural history experiences in a campaign to be launched in the 2007 tourism season. Work on the project is now underway.
“Prince Edward Island owns a rich artistic and cultural heritage, and too often we take it for granted,” said the Honourable Joe McGuire, Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA). “It is crucial that we have a strategy to promote high quality cultural tourism experiences in order to attract more visitors and benefit from increased revenues and expansion of the traditional tourism season.”
The first steps in creating the corridor involve a comprehensive, on-site inventory of PEI’s cultural tourism assets, followed by the development of a strategic marketing campaign to position Prince Edward Island as a cultural tourism destination.
“Our province holds a wealth of diverse cultural experiences that visitors often cite as a highlight of their vacation,” said the Honourable Philip Brown, Minister of Tourism for Prince Edward Island. “This strategic plan will create a cohesive promotion of this diversity which will celebrate our heritage and history as well as our arts and cuisine, resulting in a stronger economy for the Island.”
Through a competitive process, TIAPEI has hired Burnett Thorne Cultural Tourism, a Stratford, Ontario-based firm that specializes in planning, developing and marketing cultural tourism destinations, to carry out the project.
“This is a real opportunity for us, as a province, to grow our tourism industry by marketing our cultural attractions to the growing number of travelers who are enjoying cultural vacations,” said Don Cudmore, Executive Director of TIAPEI. “We look forward to completion of the inventory process and ultimately the finished product.”
A fast-growing and lucrative segment of the North American travel market, cultural tourism is described by the Canadian Tourism Commission as “an enormous opportunity for the tourism industry, for cultural and heritage organizations, and for Canada as a whole.”
The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) is providing $120,000 under the Business Development Program to the project. Tourism PEI is contributing $40,000, with an additional $10,000 coming from the PEI Department of Community and Cultural Affairs and $10,000 from the PEI Department of Development and Technology.