Neepawa tourism stakeholders plan new brand
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- Published on Friday, January 26, 2018
Banner Staff
Neepawa Banner & Press
Neepawa and area may be launching a new branding process for tourism. In recent years, and especially since the demise of the world renowned Neepawa Lily Festival, there has not been a coordinated branding effort in the area. In the past few years, the Town of Neepawa has spent almost zero dollars on tourism but has stepped up with a major commitment of $10,000 per year for three years to cover start-up costs for new tourism initiatives. Travel Manitoba’s contribution is rounded up to $25,000.
Town of Neepawa Economic Development office Marilyn Crewe said in an interview with the Banner and Press, “I heard that Travel Manitoba was doing this place-branding program from other economic development officers in the province and I knew this was something that would be a good opportunity for Neepawa. I brought the idea to council for discussion and they gave the nod to go ahead and I invited Travel Manitoba to come to Neepawa to do the analysis meeting.” The meeting in question was held Jan. 17 at ArtsForward and was attended by about 40 people with an interest in tourism. Colin Ferguson, CEO of Travel Manitoba, who attended the meeting said. “The place-branding program has been going on for almost a year now. It started with Clear Lake. They came up with all these innovative ideas so we started thinking about this and started talking a little bit about the possibility of doing some place-branding initiatives in other parts of the province. It’s designed to align the communities and get the stakeholders together like the business community and town council, the Chamber of Commerce getting everybody working in the same direction. I’ve been marketing my whole life and I know if you can get everybody working in the same direction, then you are all of common purpose and of common objective and you can be successful. In Neepawa, we will work on getting them together and working in conjunction with Travel Manitoba, getting a brand that they can stand behind, be proud of and moving the community forward behind that brand.”
Ferguson said, “The facilitated session really is the first, well it’s actually the second stage. The first stage is a community coming forward and saying we understand that you have this place branding program, we are interested in this, we can meet the requirements, we will find the $10,000 or more a year. We believe we have the 75 room nights, from the accommodations perspective all year round, we also believe we have some products that would be some interest to other people for them to come into our community. Tonight’s facilitated session was really to round that out and find to who this community is, what the marketable products are and what they believe they could stand behind.” In summary Ferguson noted, “I think the room felt there was an enormous sense of pride from a handful of people that stood up and spoke from the heart, and I believe what they have to say and I believe this is a significant opportunity for this community.” At the end of the evening the assembled group drew up a list of people who will review the meeting and come back with a recommendation. That group will be meeting by the end of January.
