Talk of tourism is in the air more and more this month as people with their finger on the pulse get ready to put their heads together at a branding session for Flin Flon with Travel Manitoba in February.
It will be beneficial to get ideas out on the table with experts in the industry and have them sifted through and tweaked until they are cohesive and something the area can use, because Flin Flon has a bit of an identity crisis. Is it a mining town? A tourism destination? A northern service centre? All three? And, equally as important, what about our identity do we focus on to bring people here from out of town?
Alan McLauchlan, former mayor of The Pas and a recent hire at Travel Manitoba, shared a message at the Jan. 23 Flin Flon and District Chamber of Commerce meeting. It’s the same message Colin Ferguson, CEO of Travel Manitoba, shared with Flin Flon back in October: Tourism is everybody’s business. It affects all of us.
McLauchlan said he wants everybody from the person who pumps your gas to Flin Flon’s mayor and council excited about tourism.
What’s interesting is that excitement already exists within Flin Flon. It manifests in different ways at different times and in different places. It’s apparent in the city’s upcoming “Win a Trip to Flin Flon” contest. It shows in the perseverance of the Rotary Club’s Flinty Fishing Derby, which draws people from out of the area every year, and is advertised hundreds of kilometres outside of Flin Flon. That energy comes through in the determination of those who aim to bring the Blueberry Jam Music Gathering to fruition. It shows in our festivals and the success of Culture Days, and it shows in the opportunities the Flin Flon Arts Council has to rub elbows with industry bigwigs to promote the talent in this little part of the world.
Yes, the excitement and energy is there in great amounts, but it lacks a cohesive direction. We are a community with great fishing and great entertainment and award-winning events. We also have industry, an interesting heritage, area accommodations with beautiful views and recreation opportunities. What we seem to lack is the unity to capitalize on all of these things.
Last year the city lauched a tourism-focused Facebook page, Flin Flon Rocks. The idea was well-meaning and a great step in the right direction.
But the page lacks an encompassing brand and is inconsistently updated. In order to do what the page is presumably meant to do – market Flin Flon to a wider audience – Flin Flon needs to get more voices at the table to figure out who we are and what we have to offer the rest of the world.
Those voices will come to the table in mid-February, when place branding discussions take place with Travel Manitoba. It’s time for stakeholders to get their acts together. The haphazard marketing of Flin Flon that has happened sporadically has got to stop. Flin Flon needs a unified vision, a unified brand, and a plan of action that can be executed with precision and consistency. The community and its stakholders have the energy to do it. But first, they all need to get on the same page.
