TRAVEL TRADE

Drawing on Gord Phillips’ professional experience selling to the travel trade and working in a senior management position with one of Canada’s leading escorted tour operators, EPG developed TradeSmart – The Travel Trade Supplier Certification Program for the Province of New Brunswick.

This professional development program included workshops for tourism operators on:

• The ‘how tos’ of working with tour operators
• Working with the European Travel Trade
• Selling to the Travel Trade
• Pricing Your Product for the Travel Trade

We developed standards of good practice for working with the travel trade; by meeting these standards participants in the workshops had the option of becoming ‘TradeSmart Certified’.  EPG delivered this program on behalf of New Brunswick Tourism for ten years.

Manuals, Tool Kits and Best Practices

EPG has developed manuals and tool kits on various aspects of getting into, and doing business in the tourism sector, and delivered workshops and seminars on a variety of topics.

Work in this area has included:

• A series of tourism business development manuals for Nova Scotia.  These guides, entitled “Establishing and Operating a…….. Tourism Business”, were prepared for accommodations, campgrounds, restaurants, sightseeing tour operations, outdoor tourism businesses, festivals and events.  Other guides in the series are Marketing Your Nova Scotia Tourism Business and Community Tourism Planning.  We have recently been working with Nova Scotia’s Department of Economic and Rural Development and Tourism to update some of these manuals, starting with Marketing and Community Tourism Planning.
• Building Travel Trade Business – Opportunities for Nova Scotia Tourism Operators
• Developing Shore Excursions for Great Lakes Cruises – A Workbook
• Making the Case for Tourism – A Tool Kit (for the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport)
• A Workbook for Tourism Product Development in Ontario’s Highlands
• Best Management Practices for Tourism Business in Atlantic Canada – A Workbook
• Best Practices for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in the Tourism Industry
• Best Practices Tour and Manual for Adventure Travel Operators in Canada