Ontario Culture Days’ Departure Lounge  |  Episode 4: Managing (the relationship between) Arts, Culture, and Tourism

Transcript

[INTRO MUSIC]

[Shawn Newman]

Hello! Welcome to the Ontario Culture Days’ Departure Lounge, an audio course podcast designed to teach you about the ins and outs, and the trends and pitfalls of cultural tourism in Ontario. I am your host, Shawn Newman speaking to you from Tkaronto.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt devastating blows to the arts and culture sectors, as well as tourism. And now, two years in, we are seeing leaders from both industries coming together in new and innovative ways as they work toward recovery and rebuilding. This audio course, produced by Ontario Culture Days, is one way that we hope to support collaboration between these sectors, and to close the gaps between them.

You might think that gaps between the tourism and the arts and culture sectors seems odd, and we agree! But there are fundamental differences in how these sectors work, even though they have so much in common. Throughout this series, we’ll explore the ideas at the core of cultural tourism, connect these concepts to the arts, and hear from professionals on the ground.

This podcast on cultural tourism is geared towards arts and culture sector workers and organizations and is designed as an audio course. But we certainly invite everyone to listen and learn with us! This podcast, its transcripts and the resources referenced are all available on the Ontario Culture Days website. Whether you are new to thinking about or working with Ontario’s tourism sector, or feel like you want an inspirational refresher, Ontario Cultures Days’ Departure Lounge has something for you.

In this fourth episode, we’re going to talk about managing the relationship between the arts and culture sector and tourism. As always, we’ll begin by introducing a few definitions, making important distinctions, and highlighting trends of interest. We’ll then talk about some of the ways to effectively manage that relationship, and more specifically about developing mutually beneficial opportunities. And as with the previous two episodes, in the second half you’ll hear us talking with folks that are doing exciting work on-the-ground. We hope that in hearing directly from them you’ll not only be inspired to engage with the tourism sector but also see how the ideas that we’re introducing to you can extend into your own work.

In addition to this podcast, we’ve compiled resources and stories about cultural tourism and the innovative ways that people and organizations are working collaboratively across sectors, across communities, and even across the globe. This podcast and the resources that we discuss are all available on the Ontario Culture Days website.

When I say, “tourism industry,” chances are that you picture travel agents and operators, transportation and associated facilities such as airports and train stations, and hotels and resorts. You’re also probably thinking about the things people do during their stay, or in other words, the attractions. More often than not, these attractions include museums and cultural attractions, or more ephemeral things like festivals, concerts, and live dance and theatre.

When we think of tourism this way, we realize that arts and culture are not just a related sector, but rather an integral part of the tourism industry. Some would even say that it is the driving force of tourism: let’s be real here, without attractions, some destinations would have little need for other tourism services. Arts and culture are also one of the main tools destinations use to differentiate themselves. Niagara-on-the-Lake is a beautiful area that has a ton to offer, yet the Shaw Festival funnels thousands of tourists and tens of millions into the local tourist economy each year. South of the border, Branson, Missouri, became the second most popular destination in the US thanks to its live performance programming.^[1] And 60% of all the people who travel to Austin, Texas, each year cite live music as the primary motivator.^[2]

The benefits of tourism for the arts and culture sector are plentiful: extra revenues, extra employment, more sponsorships and support, added offerings for local audiences, and more. Likewise, arts and culture have been shown to attract more visitors, who are generally higher spending than in other kinds of tourist economies, more likely to extend their stays, and more likely to contribute to a positive image of their destinations. Obviously, the closer that the arts and culture sector works with tourism, the likelier we are to be reaping these benefits.

If you are still unconvinced about the proximity between the two sectors, consider this: In 2020, global entertainment attendance literally collapsed, down 50 per cent to 90 per cent from 2019 figures, mainly due to capacity restrictions.^[3] And certainly, many of you listening know this reality very, very well! At the same time, an estimated 90% of the world’s population faced some form of travel restrictions, including border closures or strict quarantine measures.^[4] Those two sectors moved together with COVID. The compound effect of empty venues, airports, and hotel lobbies, as well as festival and concert cancellations, was certainly not lost to many destinations.

Take for instance Atlantic City and Las Vegas, both known for their thriving entertainment scenes, that were expected to be the 3rd and 4th most impacted markets in the US, economically speaking. Culturally vibrant Louisiana and Orlando also came in at 8th and 11th respectively.^[5] If arts and culture and tourism were among the hardest hit sectors by virtue of restrictions and limitations of one impacting the other during the pandemic, their recovery is then also bound to be intertwined.

If you manage an arts organization, you’re probably always on the lookout for ways to increase audiences or patrons and revenues, be it through programming or marketing. Of all the segments that you cater to, tourists are often overlooked despite their potential for growth. Of course, things are a little different if you happen to be the main draw in town, or if most of your audience or guests come from afar. But even then, there’s probably still some room to grow.

Regardless of how you feel towards tourists in general, they can fill seats or walk through your doors, especially when the local audience or government funding begin to stagnate. You may also at some point find yourself operating a particular type of artistic or cultural attraction that is of specific interest to tourists. As we mentioned in episode one, people travel the world to view classical and contemporary art museums and galleries, see both avant-garde and commercial live dance and theatre, and discover the works of local artisans and craftspeople. That is, tourists travel specifically for these kinds of activities and more. And as we suggested in the last episode, and have demonstrated throughout the series, there are key values and objectives of both tourism and the arts and culture sector that are closely aligned and overlap, and the basic principles in drawing tourists are the same as drawing local audiences and patrons.

In this series, our focus is on cultural tourism and supporting arts and culture organizations in Ontario to develop knowledge, skills, and offerings geared towards attracting cultural tourists. Certainly, there are many differences and distinctions between arts, culture, and heritage, and structural differences between not-for-profit and commercial systems. So, while it’s beyond the scope and the time imparted for this episode to unpack the many differences between culture, arts, heritage, and entertainment, that they pertain to tourism is undeniable. These elements are related and closely intertwined. The same tourist that attends a not-for-profit live theatre performance might also attend a commercial production, might visit an arts market of independent artisans and craftspeople, or even go shopping at chain retail stores in a mall, all in the same visit. So, for the purpose of this podcast, we’ve chosen to stay clear of parsing out the distinctions between the many different systems and economies that make up cultural tourism to instead think more broadly and not emphasize one sector at the expense of another. In essence, we’re centring the visitor experience and approaching tourism from this vantage point.

Who, then, is a cultural tourist? Generally, cultural tourists are understood to include those who visit or participate in cultural attractions. Obviously, whether the cultural attraction was the main reason for the visit, or simply incidental, changes how we engage with and promote to those visitors. And remember—while we might not think of our work as an attraction, and possibly even resist framing our work or our organization in this way, the reality is that what we offer needs to attract people.

One way to frame this is to differentiate between “arts-core” visitors and “arts-peripheral” visitors. Arts-core visitors are those whose travel is specifically to see the arts whereas arts-peripheral visitors are those whose primary reason for travel is a non-arts purpose but who go and see or engage with the arts nonetheless.^[6] For instance, a lot of people travel to Toronto each year specifically to attend the Toronto Caribbean Carnival or Pride or the Toronto International Film Festival, but there might also be people who happen to be in town for a business conference at that time and chose to attend.

And for arts-peripheral visitors, attending arts and culture events or programming may end up becoming the highlight of their trip and the primary reason for their next visit! With that said, understanding whether the decision to attend one’s cultural attraction is made ahead of time, or on the spot, is important. Knowing how and why the decision to attend was made will inform and shape your marketing decisions, which we’ll discuss in the next episode, but also the production of cultural attractions. So, the first thing is to get a sense of audience composition, between non-tourists and tourists, and then between arts-core and arts-peripheral tourists. In the case of tourists, you’ll want to understand what their motivations are to attend. Generally speaking, cultural attractions offer learning and/or entertainment. In recent years, we’ve also seen a lot of interest in “creative tourism,” or creative activities in which tourists actively participate with locals. Think about Airbnb no longer just offering accommodation, but what they call “authentic” experiences. It’s no longer enough just to see things from a distance or merely to be told about a given culture. People crave the escapism and excitement of “being” a local. And they want to learn by doing.

It’s also important to look for issues they encounter when travelling to a destination. Here, we don’t just mean the community or region, but rather the individual places that tourists might go during their stay. What tourists encounter during their stay plays into their broader experience and ultimately impacts their decision to extend their stay, return later, and tell their networks about their experience. So, if your main audience is tourists, or if many of the people who participate in your activities fall under the “arts-core” category, you’ll probably want to adopt a strong tourist orientation. This implies deliberately designing attractions that have a wide appeal, instead of say, entirely artistically-driven productions. You’ll also want to consider the tourist drawing power of your cultural attractions and ponder ways to make it more appealing. One-off performances, festivals, or ephemeral performances have great drawing power. In other words, FOMO—fear of missing out—is real.

If you do decide to cater to tourists, you’ll need to get a sense of your organization’s geographical threshold, or how far people are willing to travel to get to you.^[7] Does participating in your activities, as great as they may be, imply spending a night at a hotel? If so, what does the local accommodation, transportation, and restauration supply look like? All these things play into the cost-benefit analysis that people outside of your immediate market make to determine whether it’s worth traveling. Obviously, some people will never travel to your attraction because the costs of travelling and staying can be prohibitive, but for those on the fence, lowering admission prices or, even better, packaging your attraction with other attractions or accommodations may very well win them over.

Up next are some of our intrepid cultural tourism experts that we’ve been speaking with in the previous two episodes. We’ve woven together some of their perspectives on managing the relationship between our sector and tourism. We’ll start this half of episode four by mapping some of the gaps between the two sectors and how this creates challenges in working together. We’ve already flagged some of these throughout the series, but here we’ll look a bit more closely at business models and values. And you’ll also hear some examples of how to work with tourism, and even how tourism has a lot to learn from us.

When I spoke with Kate Monk from Explorer’s Edge, she identified how the impetus for arts and culture businesses is often different from those in tourism and other sectors. This leads to misalignment between us that impacts our ability to work together.

[Kate Monk]

Arts organizations or cultural organizations – versus destination marketing organizations or tourism businesses – the one key difference is that the businesses are more focused on and more developed in commerce. Whereas the arts organizations – or artists or crafters, anybody like that – they start with expression. They don’t necessarily have that thrust of commerce that we find in the tourism industry.

[Shawn]

I’ve spoken before about my first career as an artist, and I think Kate is absolutely right about this. The priority for artists and the organizations in our sector is so often on the expression of art. And there’s no judgement in that. It’s just different from tourism. So, as Kate said, we need to build bridges. And, I would add, we and tourism need to understand each other’s priorities and see if there are opportunities to reframe them.

Picking up on a thread from the last episode, Tova Arbus from Fringe North spoke about how a lack of clarity about what her organization does prevented tourism partners from promoting her festival. Janis Monture, the Executive Director at the Woodland Cultural Centre and who previously worked at Six Nations Tourism, had the reverse experience.

[Janis Monture]

I wasn’t quite sure of Six Nations Tourism’s mandate for a few years. We didn’t quite understand their role. And then I went there and developed what that role was moving forward – and are continuing in that way. Now there’s better, more somatic relationship with them, where we understand what each other’s goals are, we understand how one another can support.

We’ve been fortunate to understand ourselves as an arts and cultural organization, but also the role we play in tourism. We’re probably one of the highlights when people do come into the region to come see us as a museum. But obviously, because of the residential school, now there’s a lot of attention on us. It’s not like we don’t realize that – we actually quite embrace it. We have for a long, long time embraced ourselves as one of the main attractions.

We have a different understanding about us as an organization and our business model is geared towards visitors, sales, admissions and event tickets. We do have that business side of it as well, how we work as an organization too. So, as much as my programming team is super excited about what they’re going to be proposing, I’m like “now how am I gonna make money off this at the same time?”

I think we look at it from artistic quality, but I also look at it like, will this draw people in? Will this draw people to come to our site? Is it excited enough? Is it something that the average person can digest while visiting, with what we’re offering? We’ve had that tourism business model for at least 20-25 years. For us, it’s not a hard shift at all. I think we’ve just embraced it.

A lot of work that we do is with other organizations from a programming perspective. We have programming partnerships with other organizations. For example, we’re working on a project with the OSTTC longhouse, which is a mid-17th century replica longhouse. It gives us an opportunity to take some of our programming into their space and vice versa. We can connect and create some really exciting projects and programs for the community first – and then visitors as well.

Back in 2019, we had a festival. Some of our festival programs were actually took into the community. We work with some of our partners to host an event at their site. It would cause that cross promotion – you’re taking it to a new audience and taking it off site and broadening that footprint for the festival.

[Shawn]

So, while Woodland has had a very concrete understanding of themselves as an arts and culture organization, they also know that they are a tourist attraction. Embracing this dual identity, as Janis described it, has allowed them to work quite seamlessly within both sectors and with a variety of partner organizations. And although Janis spoke about their need to generate revenue and how that is always an important consideration, she also very clearly stated that community comes first.

Tim Jennings from the Shaw Festival put a bit of a different spin on it. Listen to his perspective and think about it in relation to Kate’s comment about building bridges.

[Tim Jennings]

The divide happens more clearly when tourism operators and arts and culture operators, it’s not really about them being at odds, it’s about the difference between people who are inwardly-focused on what they’re trying to accomplish and their own capitalistic framework – they want to make money, they want to do this, and they “damn the rest of you” – and the kinds of folks who are focused on a thriving tourism ecology, where they know that multiple destinations and multiple activities make for a better tourism community.

I’ve seen a lot of these people working, and where it works really well, from my point of view, is a place like Niagara-on-the-Lake or Niagara, generally. Because we’re the number one tourism destination, this rhetoric of thriving ecology has been thoughtfully increased and put together for a long time. The hoteliers, the restauranteurs, the retailers – everybody is talking to each other and we’re in constant communication.

[Shawn]

Tim’s speaking about community here differently than Janis did but, like Janis, he has an external focus beyond the walls of his own organization. And he offers this question that I think beautifully articulates how any individual or organization should think about how they position themselves in relation to others.

[Tim]

Once you’re a service to the community, if you’re a serious part of your community, and you’re having these business conversations about what you do, as well as your artistic and cultural conversations, then it’s clearer to the other players how you fit in.

[Shawn]

Tova gave some great examples of how Fringe North goes about building bridges and locating themselves with their community and the tourism ecology.

[Tova Arbus]

We’ve really tried hard to focus on collaboration. We proceed on the belief that arts and culture are the heartbeat of community. I, quite frankly, think it would have been foolish for us to jump on the scene and assume we were the only ones trying to do anything great within that sector.

Right from the beginning, we’ve reached out to the folks who are already doing those things: trying to solidify partnerships, bring fringe into the cultural venues that are already established, ensuring that we invite those key collaborative partners into events and opportunities, and meet them where they’re at with their offerings. Lots of two-way promotion happening. If they have events happening, fringe is often part of it, or at least we try to be. Everything from helping connect folks to performers for their events to hosting little pop ups within an event, depending on what it is.

We’ve tried to extend the opportunity of collaboration, that same mentality, to our tourism hubs as well. They’re just people working to engage with people. And that’s the work that we do. If we can find that point of alignment together, then that’s the stepping off point for a solid partnership.

And I’m asking the question, what do you need from us? What are folks looking for that you’ve discovered? And how can we return the favor and kind to be able to say we’re supporting the initiatives that you’re developing to try to increase and sustain the tourism in our area?

[Shawn]

Let’s loop back to more of the structural challenges that our sector presents to tourism and think about how we can work a bit differently on our end to overcome them. Tim explained to me how we do ourselves a disservice by hiding some of our strengths.

[Tim]

But I think for a lot of people, the arts especially as a bit of voodoo, they don’t they don’t really understand how it works. I think we’ve done a bad job of hiding how complicated our businesses are and how excellent we are at doing them.

The model for most theatre is excellent project management. We have a lot to teach the business community. I feel like if we open the doors and are really transparent about how we all work together and invite people inside and say, “this is how the magic trick’s done,” they get more excited about the arts and more interested in what we’re doing. That actually will help that relationship build.

[Shawn]

Another thing that our sector knows lots about is grant writing. Kate describes our aptitude for grant writing and the potential for it to be a key component to relationships between our sectors. She also explains how integral our sector is to RTO 12’s mission.

[Kate]

From our perspective, arts organizations are the geniuses at getting grants. They’re skilled at getting them because they have to for survival. But what if we could be very creative about the grants we got that would allow them to partner on certain things with us in order to make the money go further? There aren’t a lot of those conversations that go on.

From our perspective, at RTO 12 we have branded this destination very particularly — The Great Canadian Wilderness Just North of Toronto. It is to give us a competitive advantage. We have done a ton of research to determine what distinguishes us from other regions in Ontario, particularly in order for us to have a competitive advantage.

Because if you do research and people say what do you like to travel for, arts and culture will always be at the top. But not a lot of people look at that. We have that too, but we what we have that others don’t is this wilderness landscape.

We have to really though, we’re going after paddlers, we’re going after hikers, we’re going out to the outdoor adventures – these are some of my segments. We made a commitment to ensure that arts and culture are supported because they are most quickly able to exude, express place.

[Shawn]

For a different example of how our sector and tourism are intertwined, Meredith Armstrong from the City of Sudbury lays out how her team works.

[Meredith Armstrong]

I feel very privileged to say that our economic development team in the city, which is the municipal government, includes tourism and culture as one part of the team. They work together. We’re joined at the hip. We very firmly believe that economic development should include tourism and culture. In our experience, there have been different models and different municipalities of where culture lives. We’re very happy that it has been in the economic development within our city because we do see tons of ties between the two.

It’s important to see that tourism relies on culture and culture has opportunities within tourism. But there is also very much a recognition that there is importance of art for art’s sake, as well as part of the cultural fabric of where you live and how you identify and who your tribe is.

I like that we have it together in the same team at the City. That has made it very easy for us to foster those relationships and build those networking tools within both of those sectors.

I did say at the beginning that there is an importance of art for art’s sake. But yes, it still has to have a model that allows it to sustain itself and continue. And I think tourism as a means to that shouldn’t be underestimated. I think a person who travels and pays for cultural experiences is supporting that cultural organization in the destination, but is also probably more interested in experiencing the cultural offerings upon returning home as well.

I think helping organizations in the cultural realm understand the opportunities that tourism presents to generate revenue, puts them in a position to generate new art and to reach out to new audiences and engage in new ways.

[Shawn]

I love this point from Meredith: more revenue means more art.

I want to end by bringing Tim back, as he spoke with me about how the Shaw Festival’s relationships with tourism and other organizations have changed for the better.

[Tim]

If I hear things that are difficult for them, I don’t hide that from them, I tell them about it. I have a very direct relationship that way. And honestly, when I got to town, there was a bit of a town-and-gown feeling. Shaw and some of the Niagara-on-the-Lake folks didn’t feel connected. But we’ve worked really hard, my whole staff to try to change that flavor. And I think we’ve done a good job. People desperately want to talk to each other now.

The local hotelier does in fact give us a lot of money every year and we do, in fact, send them a lot of business. But there’s more to that relationship now than just that: we talk all the time about how we get out, we co-brand, we do ads together. There’s all sorts of things that we can work on together to try to drive a better ecology.

The more we understand each other, the more likely it is that stable funding will occur for more organizations and the more likely it is that people will be able to plan longer term. You’ll know that your partner is a partner for more than one year. I feel like there’s a virtuous circle and I hope that’s a good place to end on.

[Shawn]

That’s a great place to end on.

Well, having now talked about managing the relationship between arts and culture and tourism, in the next episode, we’ll explore ways to market it.

We’d love to hear about anything that you and your organization are building, especially when it comes to working with the tourism sector. To tell us about your work, or to hear more about ours, visit our website at oncd.backup.sandboxsoftware.ca or email us at info@onculturedays.ca.

I’m Shawn Newman, host of Ontario Culture Days’ Departure Lounge. This podcast was made possible thanks to support from the Province of Ontario and the Canada Council for the Arts. Thank you, also, to our experts featured in part two, and thanks to you for listening.

 

 

 

 

 

^[1] (Luo and Lam, 2018)

^[2] (OECD, 2014)

^[3] (TEA-AECOM, 2021)

^[4] (Gössling et al. 2020)

^[5] (Muro et al. 2020)

^[6] (Hughes, 2013)

^[7] (Hughes, 2013)