Wawa releases five-year tourism plan

WAWA – Wawa has released its five-year tourism plan, which aims to assist the recovery of the local tourism industry, an important economic driver and contributor to community. 

The Municipality of Wawa engaged Bannikin, a Northwestern Ontario tourism development and PR firm, with funding from the FedNor Tourism Relief Fund, to facilitate the development of its five-year tourism strategy and action plan alongside municipal staff. 

Alex Patterson, the municipality's director of community services and tourism, said he wanted the plan to be a very specific action plan to move the department forward over the next five years, and he’s certain that the town and his team will be able to accomplish its tourism goals despite the small size of his department. 

“The tourism department doesn't have a huge capacity, so we really focus on making sure that whatever we said we would do, we're actually able to do within that current capacity,” he said. 

“Or we identified partners [like] people at the Algoma Kinniwabi Travel Association, Superior Country, that can help bolster our capacity and we can work on initiatives with them so that we can actually get them accomplished within these five years. So, I would say there's nothing in here that isn't going to happen.” 

The team followed a community-based approach which saw a committee of community members overseeing the process finding the “next best steps forward” for the community in terms of tourism. 

Community participation is a major challenge for many municipalities trying to form these community-based plans, but Patterson said that he was happy with the results thanks to Wawa’s “unique situation”. 

“We’'ve got several, sort of, key community members who are extremely engaged in the industry, so we completed some community surveys with, I'm going to say, like mixed success,” he said. 

“We did have some parts of the program that were very successful in terms of the amount of tourism partners and tourism businesses who came out, they're interested in providing their feedback, we had really good market penetration on our marketing surveys for those particular businesses and industry partners.” 

The Wawa five-year tourism plan was completed at the beginning of April and can be found online at the Municipality of Wawa’s website.