How can businesses take advantage of adventurous snowmobilers coming north? A new report discussed at the latest Flin Flon and District Chamber of Commerce meeting may have the answer.
The document, compiled by Travel Manitoba, Community Futures North Central Development and consulting firm WMC, details the Northern Manitoba Snowmobile Tourism Strategic Plan, a series of goals with the aim of increasing snowmobile travel to northern Manitoba by 2023.
“With a lot of the communities in northern Manitoba, they’re looking for new industries, new economies to generate income and interest. The traditional ones are not doing as well as they normally did,” said Laura Finlay, community development officer with Community Futures North Central Development.
“This was good news for tourism, because it’s always an industry that’s existed. It’s always been important, but nobody’s paid a lot of attention to it.”
Finlay, who presented the report during the Mar. 12 Flin Flon and District Chamber of Commerce meeting along with Travel Manitoba northern tourism consultant Al McLauchlan, said the seasonal activity could have serious untapped economic potential.
“Snowmobiling is huge and a lot of people up here take it for granted. They’ve got these trails that they can go on, these lakes. You have your snow machine and you just go,” said Finlay.
“From people coming from Winnipeg or even further south, what we have up here is absolutely a dream come true. We can really grow our economy with the businesses and the economy in general.”
McLauchlan added his own experiences with seeing sledders head north to windy trails and fresh, deep snow.
“I have a son and daughter-in-law down in Regina and on Fridays, I go down to see them. I always see trucks heading north and they’ve got two sleds on the back, looking for snow. Then on Sunday, when I’m heading north, those same trucks are heading south again,” he said.
“Where are they going? They’re going to places like Madge Lake, Swan River, Carrot River. There’s no difference to them coming up here.”
To develop a strategy for snowmobiling in the north, the group organized a regional meeting in Snow Lake and created a plan consisting of five strategies: improving tourism infrastructure and organization around snowmobiling, increasing tourist attraction, creating tourism events, emphasizing services and hospitality and aiding marketing and promotion.
A number of proposed improvements fall under the five strategies, including the creation of a snowmobile trail between Cranberry Portage and Snow Lake by December 2019, keeping trails well maintained, improving access to licenses and allowing online purchases and improving tourist services, cell service, signage throughout the region.
“We need to get that infrastructure. We’ve got some good trails right now in Flin Flon to The Pas, to Swan River. We’ve got some good trails from Snow Lake to Thompson and Gillam. We’ve got nothing between Cranberry Portage and Snow Lake and that’s kind of the piece we want to take a look at, because that means everyone’s connected there. That’s important,” McLauchlan said.
One of the key points is to create signature events throughout the north involving snowmobiling, such as poker derbies, cross country events, races or rallies.
“Can you imagine the impact if 250 sledders came here? Hotel rooms, food, gas, because guess what? Sleds don’t carry anything. You can’t carry a hotel room on your back. Not many people are going to be tenting out in the snow,” McLauchlan said.
Chamber president Karen MacKinnon saw the potential in the strategy.
“To me, it’s nothing but positive all around. I think I can safely say that Flin Flon is not going to turn it down. I think it’s a good, positive approach for moving forward in our community,” she said.
