Tourism Red Deer has joined forces again with local hotels to promote the region and debuted a section celebrating Indigenous culture in this year’s tourism guide.
The partnership with Hotels Red Deer, a collaboration of 10 local hotels focused on showcasing the area and its attractions, allows both groups to pool their resources, said Tourism Red Deer CEO Jesse Smith.
“Tourism Red Deer has an ambitious goal of Red Deer becoming a top event destination for mid-sized cities in Canada. I think this new partnership enables us to really put the pedal to the metal on how we’re going to go about doing that,” said Smith.
“We’re going to do it collectively with our hotel partners, but also other community partners. I think this puts us on a new playing field where we’ve made an intentional effort to pool our resources so that we can really go big on what we’re trying to do as a region.”
The hotel partnership is not new. The two groups have worked together in the past, but joint initiatives were paused during the pandemic, which hit the hospitality industry hard.
Now that the industry is bouncing back, it is seen as time to revive the partnership.
“What we’re able to do is go in on things, whether it’s attending events, whether it’s marketing materials or marketing campaigns and things like that, we’ve agreed to do it collectively as opposed to separately,” Smith said.
“It’s just makes sense for both our organizations and both will benefit from this partnership.”
Adding a section called Indigenous Red Deer to the tourism guide is an important initiative.
“One of the things we’ve really focused on is our relationship with our Indigenous community partners within the city of Red Deer and the region,” he said.
The new section highlights local Indigenous contributions and how First Nations shaped the region.
Red Deer Elder Lyle Keewatin Richards volunteered to help develop that part of the visitor guide on behalf of the Indigenous community.
At a ceremony unveiling the hotel partnership and tourism guide last week at Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and Museum Keewatin Richards offered a blessing and oversaw a traditional smudging ceremony
“It’s an important part of our region,” said Smith. “We’re built along the river and the river has significant historical and cultural importance for the Indigenous communities that were here way before we were. We want to make sure we honoured that.”
This post was originally published on 3rd party site mentioned in the title of this site
