The South Slave Tourism Development Workshops are designed to help new and existing Tourism Entrepreneurs start or strengthen businesses in their communities, and build partnership throughout the region.

Through a combination of interactive discussion, hands-on activities, and real-world case studies, attendees will learn about business planning, brand development, and building partnership on an individual, local and regional level.

With a focus on hands on learning, practical tips, and best practices, these workshops aim to equip new and existing entrepreneurs with the skills and confidence they need to take their business to the next level or turn their good Tourism business idea into a great Tourism business.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

[email protected]

867-872-8400

[email protected]

867-874-6522

South Slave Tourism Development Workshop Schedule

Day 1: Welcome, Goals and Outcomes

Day 2: Individual Businesses and Local Partnership

In this first full day of Workshops, we are focussing on you and your individual businesses. Building anything strong starts with building a strong foundation and Tourism and Hospitality businesses are no different. Whether you’re starting out with a great idea, or you’ve been in business for years, these workshops will help you plan for a strong successful and sustainable business.

8:00 am

Delegate Breakfast
Bring your bright eyes and bushy tails, or tired eyes in need of coffee. This is a chance to meet your peers and enjoy a delicious catered breakfast (and coffee) before the conference really gets going. Did I mention we will have coffee?

9:00 am

Workshop 1: Your Big Why – Deneen Allen
Your Big Why is the very foundation of your Tourism or Hospitality business. All of the work you do to develop your business will be built off of the questions answered in this workshop.

Why do you want to start a tourism or Hospitality business right now?

Why is it important to you?

What will it mean to you, your family and your community?

After 30 year working on Tourism development in rural and remote communities in Canada, Deneen Allan always starts clients off with these questions. The answers are often both simple and profound.

10:30 am

Workshop 2: Developing your Brand Story Part 1 – Deneen Allen
Your brand is not your logo. Developing a successful brand means telling a true and meaningful Brand Story. In this workshop you’ll learn how to develop that brand story based on your own unique story and the things that make your business one of a kind.

12:00 pm

Lunch – Parks Canada
Wood Buffalo Park is a major attraction in the South Slave. Introducing visitors to the park represents a great Tourism development opportunity. Over lunch, you’ll learn about the various ways that Parks Canada can help support people to run guided tours within the park.

1:00 pm

Workshop 3: Developing your Brand Story Part 2 – Deneen Allen
Your Brand Story will shape the way you design your business. Every aspect of your business planning and development will work to tell that story. In this second part of the workshop, you’ll learn how to take things to the next level by connecting with your clients using deep human themes, shared personal values, and the 5 senses.

2:00 pm

Workshop 4: Packaging and Partnerships – Deneen Allen
In these workshops you’ll meet other entrepreneurs from your community. You may be competitors, but there’s no reason you can’t also be partners. Being the best at what you do means delivering the best experience to our guests. Everyone is good at something but no one is good at everything. Working together with other entrepreneurs will allow you create great packages for your guests that will improve the guest experience and boost revenues for everyone involved. In this workshop you’ll be given a how to guide to Packages and Partnerships in your community.

3:30 pm

Workshop 5 - Breakout: Community Package Development – Deneen Allen
Now it’s time to get your hand dirty. Building on the workshop before, you’ll take the concepts of Partnerships and Packages and start building them in real time. This breakout workshop will help you learn about the other businesses in your community, form partnerships, and put together mutually beneficial packages.

4:30 pm

Closing Remarks and Wrap-up
This will be a big day of workshops. We’ll take some time to sum up what we learned and look ahead to the day to come.

5:00 pm

Adjourn Until Dinner and an Evening Tourism Experience
Since these are Tourism Development Workshops, after a catered dinner, we’ll become tourists ourselves and experience some of the best of what Fort Smith has to offer through a local guided Tourism experience.

Day 3: Regional Branding, Packages and Partnerships

Time to move from thinking locally to thinking regionally. These workshops will help us move from a personal and community view to looking at Branding our Region and developing Regional Packages and Partnerships with our South Slave neighbours.

8:00 am

Delegate Breakfast
After an evening tour and good night’s sleep we’ll start the day right. That’s right, with coffee! (oh and delicious food too) We’ll also recap what we learned yesterday and look ahead to another full day of hands on learning.

9:00 am

Workshop 1: Branding the South Slave Part 1 - Who is the South Slave?
What do we mean by South Slave? Who are we? What do we have in common?

We’ll start the day with an introduction to our region. We’ll introduce ourselves on a regional level with delegates from each of the 7 regional communities talking about their town, what we have in common and also, what makes them unique.

9:30 am

Workshop 2: Branding the South Slave Part 2 – What place do we want to hold in the hearts and minds our (collective regional) clients? – Deneen Allen
What is our collective, regional Brand Story? What makes our region unique? What are the values we want to share with our clients on a regional level? In this workshop, we are taking the concepts from the earlier individual brand story workshops and looking at them through a wider lens.

10:30 am

Workshop 3: What are the Stars of the Show – Deneen Allen
People often think that their business is the Start of the Show. I’m sorry to tell you that visitors don’t necessarily come to the South Slave region for your business. Most often, they are coming for something bigger; a natural feature, a specific experience, a cultural event, etc. In this workshop, we’ll work together to figure out what the Star or Stars of the show are in our region and how we as entrepreneurs can support people to come and see or do what it is they’ve come to see or do.

1:00 pm

Workshop 4: Regional Packages and Partnerships
Building on the Packaging and Partnership knowledge from earlier workshops, here we are going to expand our reach from local and community-based Packages and Partnerships to Packages and Partnerships on a regional level. Together we’ll look at developing Tourism products and packaged experiences that will delight guests and keep them in and moving throughout the region for longer, experiencing more of what we have to offer, and supporting many businesses as they go.

2:00 pm

Workshop 5: Turn Right! – Jill Morse
As Tourism returns to the NWT, many visitor drive through the South Slave on their way up to Yellowknife. We are working on a regional Marketing campaign that is intended to convince people stay in the South Slave. We are just in the beginning stages of this work and we are excited to work together to share ideas to make this regionally beneficial campaign successful.

2:30 pm

Workshop 6 - Conference Wrap-up
We’ll take a few moments to wrap up our time together, review what we’ve learned and accomplished, and talk about the next steps for Tourism Development in our Region.

3:00 pm

South Slave Tourism Development Workshops Conclusion
All good things must come to an end but rest assured that while this is the end of the event, it is only the beginning of our collective work to make the South Slave region a “Can’t Miss” Tourism destination.

Workshops powered by The Firecircle

Firecircle was born from 30 years of experience helping new or existing business owners, just like you, maximize their Tourism and Hospitality business opportunities. Firecircle exists to inspire new entrepreneurs and strengthen existing tourism and hospitality businesses. The goal is to ignite tourism entrepreneurs everywhere bringing your ideas to life using accessible, easy-to-use tools to build knowledge and fan the flames of your business vision.

Firecircle provides a solid foundation in the fundamentals of business sustainability and the confidence to fulfill your potential as a visitor focused, market-ready and export-ready tourism business.

We created The Firecircle to overcome the barriers that, all too often, stand in the way of Tourism and Hospitality business development in Canada’s rural and remote communities.

High quality, easy to use and easy to understand resources and sustained support from industry experts is what sets The Firecircle apart from other Tourism development resources out there.

We are thrilled to bring the Firecircle live to the South Slave. In person learning and sharing idea live will really brings the Firecircle workshops and concepts to life. Working as a group means that you’ll be learning and strengthening your business plans in real time while building a network of like-minded entrepreneurs in your region.

ABOUT YOUR WORKSHOP FACILITATOR

Deneen Allen

Deneen is the lead content writer, conductor and coach at Firecircle. Her industry knowledge in tourism and hospitality design, product development, operations, marketing and finance is scary deep and her passion for the tourism and hospitality industry in Canada is the kindling for our team’s collective fire around the Circle. And she loves to mix it up to get the inspirational sparks flying.

Deneen understands the challenges of rural and remote tourism development in Canada – her tourism consulting company, Pure North Canada, has been igniting hundreds of projects across our beautiful country for many years: lodges, camps, glamping, parks, hotels, food concepts, Indigenous cultural spaces and places – you name it. She knows the opportunities we have in Canada, and she believes YOU can raise the bar to provide new tourism and hospitality experiences in these magical rural landscapes and legendary wilderness.

Entrepreneur, coach and mentor, Deneen has founded and operated a number of businesses over the years, including a successful design & construction firm in Vancouver, a popular corporate retreat and event space and two gourmet food shops in Ontario before founding Pure North and Firecircle. She holds at BA in Economics from University of Western Ontario, accreditations in Hotel Marketing, Hotel Design and Hotel Financial Management from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and is an alumni of the 2010 Social Venture Institute. When she’s not working on all things Firecircle, Deneen is somewhere outdoors – usually on a picnic.

All participants will be entered in a draw to win 1 of 5 annual memberships in The Firecircle 5x5 Method™ as well as 10 hours of 1 on 1 coaching and mentorship from industry experts.

A $5,000 value.

About The Firecircle 5x5 Method™

The Firecircle 5x5 Method™ is designed for members with all levels of experience. Whether you have a great idea you want to plan out, or you’ve been in business for 20 years and now want to add a new product, improve your efficiency, develop a new user experience or increase profit margin, the Firecircle 5x5 Method™ can help.

Our program is designed to accommodate all learning styles. The program is made up of 25 animated video workshops that are fun to watch, easy to understand, and full of real-life examples. The Firecircle 5x5 Method™ also includes custom-made Worksheets to help you organize your thoughts and ideas as you develop your business idea. No one knows you better than you do.

With The Firecircle 5x5 Method™, you’ll gain expert knowledge in the 5 key areas of your tourism business that will ensure your competitiveness in the market and your financial success. The bonus of completing the worksheets is that you are simultaneously completing your business plan! All in a fun-filled and empowering process!

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

[email protected]

867-872-8400

[email protected]

867-874-6522

South Slave Tourism Development Workshop Schedule

Day 1: Welcome, Goals and Outcomes

Working Together in the South Slave

Day 2: Individual Businesses and Local Partnership

Day 3: Regional Branding, Packages and Partnerships

Workshops powered by The Firecircle

Deneen Allen

All participants will be entered in a draw to win 1 of 5 annual memberships in The Firecircle 5x5 Method™ as well as 10 hours of 1 on 1 coaching and mentorship from industry experts.

A $5,000 value.

About The Firecircle 5x5 Method™

Join Our Free Trial