Research Reveals Surprising Insight About the National Capital’s Strengths and Opportunities
The pandemic greatly affected Ottawa’s tourism industry, revealing the need for a reconsideration of the city’s audiences and offerings. Resonance was engaged by Ottawa Tourism to help define a new vision for tourism in Canada’s capital and create a roadmap that would ensure both recovery in the short-term and the long-term sustainability and growth of Ottawa as a national and international destination.
We engaged over 100 stakeholders, surveyed more than 1,700 visitors from across Canada and 1,000+ local residents to understand the current state of tourism, define the visitor of the future, and compare how Ottawa ranked against 14 other cities, including eight peer Canadian cities. While Ottawa is known as the home of the national government and many national museums and institutions, our research told us that Ottawa offered more outdoor activities than any other urban destination in Canada as well as more rural experiences than any other city in the country. We combined insights to produce experience principles that included voicing reconciliation to living for the great outdoors to celebrating neighborhoods and loving our terroir.
Our work resulted in a new 5-year Strategic Plan for Ottawa Tourism as an organization and longer-term Stewardship Plan. It was a unique opportunity to tie long-range destination planning for Ottawa’s tourism industry to a shorter-term organizational strategy for Ottawa Tourism itself.
