She did return to Calgary to work, “but I moved back for good in 2000, because I’d fallen in love with PEI,” she says. “And I still see it from a visitor’s perspective. When people grow up here, they may take it for granted, but it’s a unique and special place. That’s what makes my job—supporting our tourism industry and operators—such fun.”

With over 1,100 km of shoreline, 90 sandy beaches, rolling countryside, all the lobster, mussels, oysters, and potatoes you can eat, 32 golf courses, a national arts centre, a port where cruise ships dock, an interesting mix of cultures, and oodles of charm, one might think that the tourism industry on Prince Edward Island would barely have to lift a finger to keep visitors coming back.

But one would be so wrong! We learned from Clemence of the concerted effort it takes to ensure that this vital industry (employing one in eight islanders, and in 2019 generating $82 million in provincial tax revenue), already the second largest economic driver, stays healthy and keeps growing. We also learned that this growth is only made possible through the individual efforts of all tourism stakeholders, strongly supported by services and initiatives from TIAPEI.

Today, the association has 482 members across the island from all sectors, including accommodation, restaurants, retail, attractions, festivals, and events. “We have a great variety of members with varying needs that we represent,” Clemence says.

Among the many benefits members enjoy are group insurance benefits for operators and staff, with rates for single, family, and waived coverage; exclusive discounts on services ranging from graphic design, printing, and photocopying to home heating oil, and web hosting services; and a rebate from Chase Merchant Services.

In addition to these benefits, Clemence is delighted to be able to share news about some exciting new initiatives of great benefit to operators.

PEI’s tourism operators have always practiced a high level of sanitation, but Clemence says that because of the pandemic, the industry realized that more needed to be done to reassure visitors that the island was truly a safe place to bring their families. As a result, TIAPEI and Tourism PEI partnered with EarthCheck, an Australian-based world leader in scientific benchmarking and certification and an advisory group for travel and tourism, to develop their own Safe Haven program. This initiative establishes and upholds even higher standards of health and safety management, and is offered as a voluntary program, free of charge, to members.

The Safe Haven program is flexible, in that it is applicable to all types of tourism operation—fixed roof accommodation, campgrounds, restaurants, golf courses, retail, PEI Authentic Experiences, festivals, attractions, museums, and theatres—and goes above and beyond current legislation such as the Tourism Industry Act and the Public Health Act.

The program involves an online self-assessment for operators and helps them develop standard operating procedures for various health and hygiene categories; helps operators ensure staff members have access to materials to meet the standards, such as disinfectant, masks, and hand sanitizer; provides a training program for their use; and conducts an external audit.

“What’s different about this program is that we have added in that extra layer, where we have an auditor go out and audit the property to ensure that everything the operators say they are doing, they are actually putting into practice,” Clemence explains.

In return for achieving Safe Haven certification, businesses can display in their premises the program’s “seal of approval” as well as promotional material “confirming that the location that bears it is a worry-free destination, giving visitors the assurance that they want,” she says.

Safe Haven has been so successful that it caught the attention of Skift, a leading international travel news outlet, which awarded Prince Edward Island the 2022 Skift IDEA Award for Pandemic Response.

“Another program that is near and dear to my heart is the Tourism Wellness Program,” Clemence shares. “The industry has faced some incredibly difficult years with pandemic challenges, labour shortages, and the devastation of Hurricane Fiona. We know that everyone needs support at one time or another, and during this period there was a lot of added pressure and stress not only on our operators but on their staff and families.”

This wellness initiative is offered by TIAPEI with support from the provincial government. It provides up to six sessions per year of free, professional, confidential counselling for operators, employees, and their families through the Atlantic Employee Assistance Program, with three counsellors available in-person or online. Available supports include individual and family counselling, alcohol and drug treatment, stress and anxiety support, bereavement support, couples and marital support, and resources for dealing with depression, parenting, legal or financial matters, and learning disabilities.

Early in 2023, TIAPEI hosted a town hall-style meeting so that local operators could meet and speak with the executives from three national bodies—the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, with which TIAPEI is affiliated; Destination Canada; and the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada.

“It helps us to have our finger on the pulse of what’s happening nationally,” Clemence says, “and vice versa, so that these national organizations have an opportunity to learn what our challenges and our successes are. The biggest challenge across the country is the labour workforce, and that’s the one we are working on now. We do high school presentations about careers in tourism and culinary, we host job fairs to showcase the available positions, and we have a public perception campaign where we talk about what’s so great about the industry,” she explains.

“We have done two international recruitment missions and we have a full workforce action plan that addresses housing, childcare, and transportation. We are trying to attack it from every angle but there is no single, magic bullet that will fix it immediately.”

A lot of conversation took place around international recruitment and housing solutions for seasonal workers, permanent residents, or people on working holiday visas, and how the industry can better accommodate individuals coming to Canada to work.

“It was worthwhile to hear because we can take what we learned from operators in other parts of the country and try to implement it here,” says Clemence, referring to the three-year New Tourism Workforce Action Plan which TIAPEI instituted in June 2022, which highlights the need for continued support of operator capacity.

Clemence and the TIAPEI staff, in partnership with the federal and provincial governments, have worked with industry to develop an array of free training programs and workshops that offer operators opportunities to enhance their skills and acquire new techniques for developing their businesses. Among these was a mixology workshop with Lesley Quinn, Atlantic Canada’s Top Sommelier; workshops on how to use social media and Instagram strategies to take business to the next level; and Commercial Insurance 101, from the experts at the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

In addition to workshops developed for owner/operators are several programs aimed at enhancing the workforce. One example is a 12-week kitchen training and internship Entry Level Cook Training program, in which participants can earn a stipend equivalent to the minimum wage for over 30 hours a week, funded through the Canada-PEI Labour Market Agreements.

PEI BEST Service Excellence offers a one-day workshop with five modules which teach employees the skills to handle customer complaints, and there are opportunities to access Canada’s best online tourism and hospitality training through emerit. These are national skills training products developed by Tourism HR Canada and distributed by TIAPEI.

Through emerit learners can study over 24 occupations online at times convenient for them, including Event Coordinator, Front Desk Agent, Sales Manager, Director of Housekeeping, Heritage Guide, and Travel Manager. Employees certified through emerit earn a national credential that identifies them as professionals.

So yes, there were pandemic shutdowns, inflation, workforce shortages, and a hurricane to contend with, but Clemence says, “There was a silver lining in all this. It has strengthened communication and collaboration within the industry. We had a strong return in 2022 and we are hoping for the same in 2023 when the numbers are in,” she shares.

“It is great to see the passion of our operators as they innovate and adapt their offerings, adjust, and move forward because we are all partners in this. We want to make sure the public understands the value of tourism because it’s a celebration of where we live, our neighbours, our history, our authenticity, and our farmers and fishers. I think it’s important that we continue to tell this story.”

The post Celebrating Canada’s Holiday Island<p class="company">Tourism Industry Association of Prince Edward Island</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Chief Executive Officer Andrew McNair began his tenure with the association in 2022, and he says that its current mission is to provide the advocacy and support that its members, and the tourism industry at large, need.

One of the biggest pieces of TIANB’s work is advocacy, especially in tackling issues facing tourism operators and assisting in finding resources to solve these issues. This is done to help move things along for operators in the province and both identify and solve problems so that members are minimally affected.

Training is another key part of the association’s operations, as it offers a breadth of modules and certification programs for local workers and managers to elevate their skills and ensure that there are good employees and trained workers in the industry. These include modules like customer service training and responsible beverage programs for bars and restaurants, with many more programs available relevant to all sectors.

“We want to be a stakeholder in the quality of the New Brunswick tourism product,” McNair says. He also wants to elevate the industry as an attractive career option for both new and returning staff to the industry, so that a healthy pipeline of capable workers can be established and continue to prosper to benefit the sector.

Emerging from a turbulent start to the decade, McNair says that a lot of struggles persist for the tourism industry as it attempts to shake off the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a lot of help still needed from operators. However, he says that tourism in New Brunswick is in a good place, with demand having returned in large measure. Earlier in 2023, signs seemed to point to a positive summer season, but speaking at the end of August, the scene seems to have levelled out. Operators report that it may not be as flush a season as originally anticipated, with the unseasonably rainy weather in the Maritimes being a likely leading factor.

“We continue to be optimistic,” McNair says, as tourism numbers reach close to the pre-pandemic standard and more people look to get back outside and explore what the province and its neighbouring Atlantic provinces have to offer.

He says that tourism is one of the many industries currently affected by labour shortage, especially in the more rural areas of New Brunswick, but operators are finding creative ways to address this. Approaches include finding technologies to create efficiencies that will allow operators to do more with fewer people, or minimizing hours to accommodate more workers.

The options available are not necessarily the most desirable, but everyone involved is making the best of it. Regardless, a lot of work is being done within the tourism sector to increase, improve, and identify opportunities for product in the province.

A few sectors and initiatives within provincial tourism have seen growth within the past year or so. McNair cites Outdoor Adventure, an all-encompassing promotion of outdoor activity and recreation in New Brunswick, as one that has been successful thus far and is still growing. This is attributed largely to people coming to the province and looking for things to do in nature. Operators are taking advantage of every opportunity available to capitalize on this interest with geo-domes, bike travel, trails, campgrounds, and even hunting and fishing, as people are very interested in the outdoor experiences the province can offer.

This outdoor focus also dovetails nicely with buy-local initiatives in New Brunswick, which are providing a boost in business for food and beverage companies. McNair says that craft spirits is one example of a part of this sector that is thriving, with new vendors appearing every few months. “Creative initiatives are thriving and taking advantage of what the consumer is looking for today,” he says, and are proving to be a growing ally for local tourism as time goes on.

The Tourism Industry Association of New Brunswick regularly leverages its partnerships with other organizations to boost the services it provides. Frequent partners include provincial and national tourism industry associations of Canada, and New Brunswick works closely with all of them and supports their respective initiatives. The organizations also share ideas and best practices with one another.

McNair says the government of New Brunswick provides valuable education and labour resources, citing how the association regularly works with the early education and childhood development branch of the province to get tourism on the radar of schools, to encourage students to consider it as a future career opportunity.

Other associations, like Tourism HR Canada and Restaurants Canada, provide training and education, with the latter part of a reciprocal deal where members in New Brunswick can take advantage of services on offer. He also says that the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency is a strong partner and a huge supporter of the tourism industry, helping operators and providing sponsorships and loans where possible.

“We try to keep our networks as open as we can,” says McNair. “A lot of the issues in our industry are not limited to just us, so we do our best to offer support to partners in return.”

Going forward into a new year, he says that the association wants to focus on what the tourism industry needs; as someone who is relatively new to the scene, his focus is on listening and learning, and identifying where support and growth lies in the province. “If we aren’t listening and figuring out where the gaps and opportunities are, we aren’t much good as an organization.”

While tourism in the province is still strong, the Tourism Industry Association of New Brunswick aims to anticipate its members’ needs to facilitate growth and future strength. It will continue to do what it does best while adding even more services, providing new training opportunities and staying abreast of current tourism issues to ensure its strength as an advocate. Above all, the association will look to build a bigger and better organization into 2024 and beyond, and McNair and his team are looking forward to another 40 years of TIANB being the go-to place for New Brunswick-based businesses and tourism operations to flourish.

The post Opportunities Abound for Provincial Tourism<p class="company">Tourism Industry Association of New Brunswick</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

How it all began
The Halifax airport, located 30 minutes from downtown Halifax, was built by the Federal Department of Transport and opened in 1960, serving approximately 180,000 passengers annually in its early years. Originally, it was managed by Transport Canada, but that changed on February 1, 2000, when Halifax International Airport Authority (HIAA) took over operational and managerial control.

This control, according to a government policy developed in 1992, allowed the Minister of Transport to empower local communities, through a devolution process, to take greater advantage of the airport, offer services that meet local demands and attract businesses, make significant improvements to the airport’s facilities, and enhance its role as an economic generator for the region.

In 2005, the terminal building was named after Robert L. Stanfield, in honour of Nova Scotia’s well-respected Premier (from 1956-67) and leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, serving as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition (from 1967-1976), where he earned the moniker of “the best PM Canada never had.” Two years later, the entire airport was renamed the Robert L. Stanfield International Airport.

Into the 21^st century
By its very nature, there is something exciting about an airport, especially an international one that’s been rated by passengers as among the best in the world.

In recent years, Halifax Stanfield received recognition numerous times from the Skytrax World Airport Awards, in which over 13.25 million passengers from 112 countries take part in annual airport satisfaction surveys and rank it in various categories, anywhere from second to tenth in the world. The airport has also been ranked third in North America in Airport Service Quality (ASQ) ratings.

We wanted to learn more about what makes this airport such a success, so we spoke with Joyce Carter, President and Chief Executive Officer, HIAA, and Marie Manning, Vice President of Business Development and Chief Commercial Officer, HIAA.

Carter tells us what she told an international conference in Amsterdam in 2017 when she was invited to speak on how an airport can operate cost-effectively and still offer the highest quality service: “It’s the result of great cooperation and collaboration among everyone in our airport community.”

Carter and Manning agree that they thoroughly enjoy working for an organization where the focus is on public service, economic growth, and community values, in a space where no two days are ever the same.

With 3.5 million passengers expected to move, in 2023, through a facility that is served by 16 passenger airlines flying an average of 100 regularly scheduled and charter flights per day, to 35 destinations across Canada, the U.S., the Caribbean, and Europe, how could it be otherwise?

But passengers are not the only people in the airport. There are approximately 4,300 people who work for one of 102 organizations operating at the airport, including 200 directly for HIAA. These businesses include airlines, aviation service providers, aerospace and defence, car rental companies, food and beverage services, retail shops, hotels, and many others, all available to support a thriving aviation industry and passenger journey.

Advancing the Stanfield experience
As Carter noted in 2018, when Halifax Stanfield hosted the inaugural ACI (Airports Council International) Customer Excellence Global Summit, “We know that providing our passengers with more options and price points, such as ultra-low-cost flights and more nonstop routes to popular destinations, gives them more reasons to travel, for business or leisure. Halifax Stanfield has become the airport of choice for more and more passengers, which we’re thrilled to see.”

In addition to the sorts of services travellers might expect, Halifax Stanfield also has unique offerings, including a nursing room; a multi-faith worship centre; a volunteer therapy dog program in partnership with St. John Ambulance; the Tartan Team Volunteer Host Program; Autism Aviators, created in partnership with Autism Nova Scotia and aimed at easing the travel process of individuals on the autism spectrum; and Books Now Boarding, in partnership with Halifax Public Libraries.

Halifax Stanfield’s commitment to service excellence isn’t only about the passenger experience. It is also focused on ensuring the airport is socially and environmentally sustainable. The airport has earned Level 3 accreditation through Airports Council International—North America’s Airport Carbon Accreditation Program, the only institutionally endorsed global carbon-management program for airports. Level 3 accreditation means the airport demonstrated it was managing and reducing CO₂ emissions and engaging stakeholders to do the same as part of the global airport industry’s response to climate change.

Included among the airport’s environmental achievements are the construction of the LEED silver-certified Combined Services Complex, home to HIAA’s emergency response and maintenance teams; a stormwater treatment system; a more environmentally friendly de-icing alternative; and a solid waste management program which received the provincial Mobius Award of Environmental Excellence.

How the Airport Authority model works
Carter explains that the HIAA “is a non-share capital corporation, meaning that we are required to reinvest any surpluses back into airport operations or development. We don’t issue dividends to shareholders, and any surplus revenue is how we pay for our growth and development.”

She says revenue is derived from various sources, including landing and terminal fees paid by airlines that use the facility, business tenants who rent space, and non-aeronautical activities like parking, shopping, and dining. “We’re required to set our aeronautical rates at levels that are close to meeting the cost of running the facility, and what’s left over is reinvested in the airport, making it better for passengers,” she shares.

“How the model works and how funds are generated is a really interesting question, which begins with the airlines,” says Marie Manning, speaking from a business development perspective. “Everyone may not understand our role from an airport development perspective and what airports do to attract airlines to service an airport: we have a strong air service development team that, based on solid business cases and developed in partnership with tourism and economic development agencies, presents to appropriate airlines opportunities to launch a new route or provide additional air service for our community.”

Since HIAA took over the facility, the list of major improvements through a multi-year, multi-faceted Airport Improvement Program has been truly impressive.

Among them was an extension of Runway 05/23 to 10,500 feet, the longest in Atlantic Canada; reconfiguration of the airport roadway network; construction of a 2,300-space parkade, with an over-the-road pedway and the province’s only moving sidewalk; complete restoration of all runways and taxiways; expansion of international and domestic arrival areas; a self-service baggage drop system, making the airport the first in North America to offer this service; and creation of the public Observation Deck.

Recent investments include the construction of a new air cargo logistics park, including a facility that features a large cold storage area from which fresh seafood, mainly live lobsters, are shipped via cargo services to Europe and Asia, and the construction of a new taxiway to Runway 14, to improve aircraft operational efficiency and reduce idling time.

Meeting challenging times head-on
2019 had seen phenomenal growth. For the third year in a row, the airport served more than four million passengers. The airport had increased its number of non-stop destinations, including new services to Chicago and Philadelphia, and increased capacity to New York, with total U.S. air travel increasing by 19 percent over the previous year.

Then came March 2020 and the lockdowns, which severely impacted the aviation industry and revenue flow at airports around the world, including Halifax Stanfield, when tourism, immigration, visiting family and friends, and business travel came to a standstill. However, cargo movement continued throughout the pandemic because of the demand for essential items like personal protective equipment, vaccines, and other goods. At the height of the pandemic at Halifax Stanfield, passenger activity was down more than 90 per cent, but cargo activity was only down about 20 per cent.

“We say that cargo helped us keep the lights on,” Carter says, “because it allowed exports to continue, so from a regional economic perspective, it was important as it has a $500 million economic impact annually to the Province of Nova Scotia. However, from HIAA’s perspective, it didn’t come close to replacing the passenger business we lost,” she explains.

“We are still in recovery mode,” she says, “but we are on track in terms of what we had anticipated coming out of a very difficult time for the aviation industry. In fact, we have done extremely well, and so far in 2023, we are at approximately 85 percent of the passenger volumes we had in 2019. We are very pleased with the numbers, and we are on track, looking at it from a forecast perspective, for next year.”

She adds that it has taken a concerted effort to recover thus far, working with many partners—including the Atlantic Canada Airports Association as well as the Canadian Airports Council and Airports Council International—to provide a seamless travel experience for passengers. Recovery has also involved working with diverse tourism associations such as Tourism Nova Scotia, the Tourism Industry Association of Nova Scotia, the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, Discover Halifax, Destination Canada, various economic development agencies, and the airlines themselves.

“It’s really important for us to regularly stay in touch with the airlines to understand what their challenges are and where there may be opportunities, and analyze those to see if there is an alignment with us so we can develop a business case and support them,” Carter says.

“It’s about negotiating with airlines to get service into Halifax,” she continues, “a situation where we need to provide them with as much information as we can—not only about our airport but about our community from tourism and economic perspectives, to see if it matches their business needs.”

Speaking of the recovery, she affirms that the demand for air service is strong again, and planes are fuller than they have been.

In 2023, three airlines offered non-stop flights to Europe, with year-round service to London Heathrow by Air Canada and summer seasonal service to Frankfurt by Condor and Discover. Halifax Stanfield is connected to the U.S. with Air Canada flying daily year-round to Newark and Boston, and American Airlines operating in the summer season to Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. American Airlines recently announced it would also begin flying between Halifax and New York’s LaGuardia airport starting in June 2024.

The sun flight season at Halifax Stanfield begins soon, with several airlines offering non-stop flights to Florida, the Caribbean, and Mexico. Manning says airlines are increasing their capacity to these destinations to meet high demand. In addition, Manning hopes to see more air service to Canadian destinations, including regional connectivity, soon.

Moving forward
“We’re very optimistic about the future,” Carter tells us. “We spent a lot of time at the beginning of the pandemic thinking about our future, our recovery, and about our region, and how we could restart and secure air services again.”

The planning to which she refers is not only for the immediate future, but also includes a long-range Master Plan with passenger and cargo growth projections to 2041. “When we created the Master Plan in 2020 and 2021, we didn’t know how recovery from the pandemic would play out. Today in 2023, in terms of recovery overall, we are where we thought we would be, which is a pretty awesome achievement, and we’re optimistic about the years to come.”

Carter, who has been named one of Atlantic Canada’s top 50 CEOs for four consecutive years, and named in 2023 by Atlantic Business Magazine as one of the 25 most powerful women in business, is humble when she speaks about her work, describing herself as a public servant. “What gets me motivated every morning is being able to come to work in a place that makes a difference in people’s lives, from personal travellers reuniting with family, to international business travellers, to the businesses that are located here in the airport, and to the tourism operators in our local communities,” she says.

“Every little piece of work we do here contributes to someone’s success or happiness. Knowing that we are here to serve the public, and that what we do matters, is what motivates me.”

The post Halifax Stanfield: A Beacon of Success in Atlantic Canada<p class="company">Halifax International Airport Authority</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

These have been three decades of promoting the growth of a dynamic and adaptable workforce and supporting human resource development in a globally competitive and sustainable industry. By providing tourism stakeholders with the tools and resources they need to thrive in their employment and entrepreneurial pursuits, the organization collaborates with the industry to attract, develop, and retain valuable tourism professionals.

Recognized as a Canadian Workplace Culture Leader for outstanding organizational culture, the organization takes pride that its team embraces the belief of putting people first. With its employees, clients, business partners, and the local community, Tourism HR Canada aims to nurture this strong and supportive workplace culture industry-wide by promoting the growth of a dynamic and adaptable workforce while enabling HR development initiatives for a globally competitive business.

“Tourism HR Canada’s mandate can be summarized as building a resilient, competitive, and inclusive labour market,” says President Philip Mondor. “It comes down to addressing whatever workforce issues might prevail in the tourism sector. Tourism itself is made up of well over two million workers, working in every riding in Canada, in five different industries that comprise the sector.”

Tourism is a large industry indeed and the role of the organization is to coordinate and facilitate all activities that address these realities. These include setting standards for best practice by defining skills and projecting skill and labour demands; attraction and retention campaigns; working with education systems to align programming; and developing training and certification programs that align with industry needs.

“Research is at the foundation of a lot of what we do,” Mondor says. “We’re known as a foundational labour market system as well. So when the government of Canada first set up these types of organizations, within the mandates were some fundamental areas of work, one being research.”

That means the organization is responsible for the production of most of the types of labour market research and analysis that inform policy and program decisions for the industry. But it’s not alone on this front. Tourism HR Canada works very closely with Stats Canada and other groups that specialize in this kind of research, but its job is really to pull it all together, particularly focusing on the analysis and decisions as to where research is necessary to inform policy.

“It’s everything from what we would call foundational statistics—such as demographics, supply/demand projections, compensation data—to what the trends and prevailing challenges are,” Mondor explains. “That’s kind of a bread and butter or fundamental category, but there’s so much more.”

Demands on the research come from diverse sources, such as governments and academia. The organization investigates everything from supply and demand, which is a very complex field, to sentiment surveys to ascertain people’s views of working in the sector from multiple angles, such as through a consumer’s lens or a worker’s lens.

State of industry reports have become another high priority, and call for the organization to take periodic measures of how well the industry is managing in the current political, social, and economic environment. Thanks to the pandemic, that’s an activity that has occupied a lot of time and continues to do so.

“We’re the go-to agency responsible for having a good understanding of what’s happening with the labour market and what should we focus on looking forward, particularly to inform policy and program investments,” Mondor says.

While that kind of research tells Tourism HR Canada what it is they need to tackle, working with the education and training sector to develop curricula and modes of delivery, for example, is more current. During the pandemic years, the emphasis naturally shifted to what the research could provide to inform policy because conditions were so disruptive with all kinds of novel phenomena to consider.

“Although the sector is very large and represents about 10 percent of the labour market, we don’t operate in a vacuum,” says Mondor. “If you look at the broader labour market context and the broader economic, social, and political context, we’re part of that larger narrative. But we have to understand how we work within that context to address the complexity of this sector, which is very diverse.”

While the pandemic has very much affected how employers are attracting and retaining workers, some things haven’t changed from a decade or even 20 years ago.

“In other words, some of the challenges we face today are structural and systemic,” Mondor says. “They’re not new, but they’re amplified—and perhaps more complex in many ways. The obvious ones you hear in the headlines today are things like housing, which is a factor of supply; that there are just not enough workers to fill the demand for skills; the changing skills landscape; and so on.”

Emerging from the pandemic requires smarter, more sophisticated human capital practices, because competition for workers and changing cultural views have changed the landscape entirely, he adds. “You can’t look at your workforce like you did in 2019 or before that. It’s fundamentally a new world.”

Learning to work with fewer people despite the demand for growth means doing much more with what’s called a “blended workforce,” where companies are sharing workers and finding ways to work with more contingent workers while still fostering the development of an anchor team.

“But that alone gives you an idea of some of the complexity here, because some of those workers could be working anywhere on the globe, or working in another region where there are different factors at play, different labour laws, different kinds of responsibilities around the way people are paid, how you communicate,” Mondor says. “It changes the culture of your workplace.”

Referred to as “reworking the work arrangements,” it involves being accommodating and adaptive to the different needs of workers. In a way, that’s not new, but attitudes and expectations around such an approach have changed in ways that are no longer a differentiating factor—it’s now foundational that you have to have your work designed in ways that are tailored to each and every worker.

“It’s a much more complex way to think about how you manage your workforce,” says Mondor. “It’s about how their HR management goes beyond their front door and community-led strategies where they have to be far more engaged in community-levelled efforts to better influence what’s happening from a public policy point of view.”

The bottom line, he adds, is that HR today doesn’t look anything like it did a decade ago. To assist with navigating this dynamic and ever-changing industry, Tourism HR Canada has designed Discover Tourism, a website with programming to attract and retain workers for the industry.

First launched a decade ago, recent investment by the federal government has resulted in a massive refresh and expansion of the site, demonstrating a change in attitudes—“not just with employers and the tools to help them, but also with job seekers and those already working for us,” shares Mondor. “It’s a much larger ecosystem that we tap into with a more cohesive strategy to not only illustrate what the value proposition is with the industry but really to help people understand and navigate it and to create better career paths.”

While the pandemic changed much in the tourism field, the organization already understood pre-pandemic the kinds of changes on the horizon in the workforce and anticipated a number of the challenges that the pandemic brought on so abruptly, specifically those of losing 880,000 workers within 10 weeks and then being closed for more than two years.

The Future Skills project was formed to map and define the way the workforce would look in a dynamic way that would continue to be responsive to evolving changes. These changes have in fact been in demand in many other industries the organization works with, both within and outside of Canada.

This experience, and the organization’s own prescience, has now enabled Tourism HR Canada to be at the forefront of analyzing skill demands and helping define other needs in the sector for the Future Skills project. This will roll out in the late fall branded under the Workforce Management Engine.

Along with this initiative is the Labour Market Forum, an event financed by the Government of Canada designed to bring in 80 to 100 people responsible for looking at workforce issues from across Canada, such as heads of associations involved with HR and large companies, as well as government associations.

Topics include immigration—a constant subject of discussion in many industries as immigration is a major source of workers—as well as Indigenous workforce development, employer practices, and the workforce ecosystem.

Mondor makes the point that the pandemic was a highly disruptive period, and it changed the narrative and the reality of how labour markets are addressed. “This has been a sum game for us in terms of increasing visibility and increasing people’s true understanding of these challenges,” he says.

From a public policy point of view, he adds, the organization has a seat at the table now like never before. “And we have a strong voice. So if there’s nothing else the pandemic and all those challenges did for us, that’s a big one. And it’s monumental.”

Soon, the organization will be launching the updated Canadian Academy of Travel and Tourism, a suite of resources for high schools, across Canada. Teachers will be able to tap into a variety of learning materials that can be incorporated based on their unique program needs, plus become part of a worldwide network of tourism educators via the Global Travel and Tourism Partnership.

“These are all elements that materialized largely because the pandemic accelerated the demand for these particular tools,” Mondor explains. “And around Indigenous workforce-related efforts, there too there has been a much better understanding of the kind of framework and approach we need to take and some headway on that. And while they’re all complex, there are different challenges here that we’ll continue to work on. There’s no hard outcome at the moment, but there’s a lot of groundwork.”

As for milestones to achieve in the coming years, the organization’s overall aim will be to grow the tourism workforce to 2.5 million by 2030. “There are a lot of things that need to happen, the most important being that we do need to continue to have influence and further inform critical policy changes, particularly with the immigration system and with employment insurance schemas,” says Mondor.

“Related to that is the Discover Tourism initiative and program. It’s such a foundational and important tool for such a broad audience. We need to nourish that and ramp it up, expand it. The more that happens, the more it facilitates a lot of the needs. It’s kind of the go-to spot.”

Underpinning that are new tools in response to the market along with new research. “It’s been fascinating to look at the kinds of inquiries we’ve had around research in the last two-plus years,” Mondor says. “We’ve been doing research since the inception of the organization, and producing lots of information monthly and annually. However, the pandemic has motivated people to work with that information in ways we’ve never seen, and it’s bred a demand for more targeted information, and more informed questions. There’s more interest in different kinds of data.”

The organization is also eager to delve into issues like modelling data on understanding, which is “sophisticated, but absolutely fascinating,” Mondor says.

“Another aspect we’re working with is where a new partner of ours is studying just what can change the behaviour of employers—to help them look at HR differently. So you can see this goes beyond the conventional; it’s getting into the psychology of these things,” he says. “It touches on how behaviour links to economic policy, and understanding the dynamic aspects of political context. The complexity is much greater than people may appreciate.” And Tourism HR Canada is here to help make sense of it all.

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