by Jim Glab
November 2005

Marketing any consumer product in a competitive environment is a pretty big task. But what if your product is a country? How can you convince people all over the world that of all the places they could go, your country is the one to visit this year? That’s the challenge facing Michele McKenzie. As president and CEO of the Ottawa-based Canadian Tourism Commission, she oversees a vast coalition of local and provincial governments and private-sector marketing partners. Her task-as much diplomatic as administrative and creative-is to keep them all on the same page in promoting Canada to potential visitors.

Michele McKenzie

How did you get involved in tourism marketing?
I started in events management and conference planning as an independent event planner. I started on the festival side; then I moved to the conference and corporate side. Through that, I was exposed to a lot of destination marketing partners in Halifax, where I was working at the time and where I went to school. So, I got interested in destination marketing. I went to work for the City of Halifax as manager of tourism when they started destination marketing in an aggressive way. Then I went to work for the province of Nova Scotia in their marketing unit, and ultimately became director of marketing in Nova Scotia, then deputy minister.

As deputy minister of tourism in Nova Scotia, I became more exposed to the Canadian Tourism Commission. I sat on the board, and when the position of president opened up, I threw my hat in the ring-and then I found myself in Ottawa as president of the CTC.

Why did you move from the private to the public sector?
The appeal to me of the public sector was simply that that is how destination marketing was organized in Nova Scotia-and in most Canadian provinces. But I became very attracted to the idea of promoting the destination I was in-Halifax and Nova Scotia-and that was the only way to advance my career. In event and conference planning, I was always marketing a destination anyway. I didn’t have a sense of moving from the private to the public sector; when I joined the public sector, my role was to market these destinations for meetings and conventions. So, it was really just an extension of what I had been doing.

What is the Canadian Tourism Commission, and how is it funded?
CTC is a public-private partnership, structured as a federal crown corporation-a company wholly owned by the federal government, but expected to operate in a commercial manner. The core budget comes through an appropriation from the federal government, with the expectation we’ll match it dollar for dollar or more with private sector investment. Our board of directors is predominantly private-sector, and we’re run like any private marketing company. The big distinction for us is that we don’t own the product we’re marketing-we are marketing a country and a destination, with partners around the table who are delivering on the experience and delivering the product. That’s different from most marketers, whose companies have lots of control of their product. But we do have influence over the product in the sense that where we see opportunities, we can influence industry to go with us in pursuing those opportunities.

With all these parties involved, does your job require more tact and political skill than a private-sector executive position?
Perhaps. That’s where my public-sector background comes in handy. But because our board is predominantly private-sector and our key chairs and the committees we work with are led by private-sector people, we are quite entrepreneurial and are expected to meet targets like any business.

Working in this industry, I have observed that when times are good, there’s not much coming together around the need for strong destination marketing. But with the challenges the tourism sector has had in the world-and Canada has not been immune-over the last three or four years, it’s brought a focus among all partners-public and private sector-that there’s a strong need for good destination marketing.

How is Canada’s tourism doing?
This is a mixed year-our results are strong from some markets, we’re struggling from others. We have double-digit growth from all our international markets except the U.S. In the long-haul U.S. market, our business is strong; but we’re struggling in the border market, which is a very high-volume market. That market is off, and it has been for the last few years. We hoped that over time and through various efforts we had focused in that area, it would come back more strongly this year-but it just has not. Certainly the price of gas is affecting us in the drive market more than the air travel market.

I understand you’re planning to rely more on the Internet in your marketing.
We’re seeking a one-on-one relationship with the consumer, so we’re trying to hit the consumer on as many points as possible to compel them to think about Canada as an interesting travel destination. People around the world generally have a very positive image of Canada, and for people who travel outside their own country, Canada is on their list of the top five destinations they want to visit in their lifetime. They also perceive Canada as a safe and stable destination, a place they’ll get to sometime-but they don’t see a compelling need to get there this year. And that’s what we’re trying to put into our messaging, so we’re going to use the Web as a tool to speak to those consumers more one-on-one about why Canada offers a great experience for them right now.

In the next couple of years, the U.S. plans to require a passport from everyone coming across the Canadian border, including returning U.S. citizens. How will this affect your tourism?
This initiative was announced but has not yet come into effect-and it’s important to get that message out. The requirement for American citizens is that they will need a passport to get back into the U.S. But there’s also been an announcement that other secure documents will be accepted in the place of a passport-although it’s not yet clear what “other secure documents” means. We’re trying to get a better understanding of that.

We’ve done some research of the impact on Canada, and again it’s going to hit us hardest on that border market-the drive market. Much of that travel is same-day travel coming into Canada; much of it is weekend or short-duration travel, and that’s where we’ll see the biggest impact. But longer-haul travel out of the U.S., especially air travelers-the vast majority of those people already hold passports and don’t see this as a barrier. For the corporate clientele, there is a much higher instance of passport ownership.

But the more these types of initiatives come into play, the more it reinforces thinking of the border as a barrier. So we’re working with our partners in the U.S., with the border services agencies, to see if we can develop “fast passes” and similar tools to facilitate border travel. It’s a concern to us, and we’ve been working to put mechanisms in place to ease the consumers’ concern and the business travelers’ concern as we get closer to 2007 and 2008.

How often do you travel on business?
I travel every week on business. The majority of that is within Canada-for meetings with our partners. Also, we have offices in 10 countries around the world and numerous offices in the U.S., so I’m also on the road with our own business, dealing with clients and with our own staff in those countries throughout Europe, Asia and Central America.

What kind of technology do you use when you travel?
I rely on a BlackBerry every day; I also use cell phones and I travel with my laptop. I find for different purposes, I need different technologies. Much of the work we’re doing through email is working with attachments, and for that reason I need my laptop. And I find that my cell phone is just a very convenient mechanism-I use texting often on a cell phone. But my main tool is the BlackBerry.

What do you consider the biggest frustration of business travel?
The biggest issue for me is keeping in touch with the office, because travel for me is a routine, not an event. I don’t have the freedom to say, well, after I get back I’ll deal with this or that. So, I try to make sure I have mechanisms in place to be seamless about my work when I’m on the road. That’s something my office and I work very hard at. We’re employing all the technology that’s intended to support me in that. But technology doesn’t always provide all the answers. Despite my ability to be in contact through technology, I still believe my most effective dealing with partners is face-to-face-hence my need to be on the road as much as I am. But I think the largest frustration is being able to be effective while being remote, and being face-to-face when I have to.