MBiz

16 MBiz May 2014 Grow with Us 15% city municipal tax decrease over the past four years while: For more information contact us today: www.sayyestodauphin.ca www.sayyestodauphin.ca PA R K L A N D learned from wonderful women, learned some of the Ukrainian language, taken away something personal, and learned to dance," Davar says. "Then they go home and they talk about it and share their pictures. It's authentic, it's real, it's visceral, it's emotional, and there's nothing scripted about it." Part of the experience is not only making community venues a place of engagement and immersion, but bringing value to the community group that has that facility. Tour groups book the experience through Tourism Dauphin, and the cultural groups involved in the experience — the Ukrainian Catholic Women's League and Sche Raz dance troupe are the main participants — share average annual revenues of about $22,000. Experiential tourism isn't entirely new to Dauphin. Iconic local fi sher Don (Sticky) Stokotelny, who owns Sticky's Bait, Tackle and Guiding, has offered unique ice-fi shing experiences for many years. Guests pile in to a Bombardier to ride in comfort to the best fi shing spots on Lake Dauphin, where they enjoy a catered high-end barbecue lunch and an authentic fi sh fry for dinner. The town also offers a seven-seat conference bike for local tours. One of only two such bikes in North America, it was designed and built by a German artist. A guide steers the bike to local sites and it can be an add-on to the Savour the Flavour tour. When it comes to creating memorable experiences, Davar says community size doesn't matter. "I would argue that every community has the infrastructure, we just haven't learned to put programming in it." But communities do have to conduct an inventory of their assets and their storytellers and then match the two together. "You can have the size, you can have all the attributes and all the assets, but until you create the programming, it hasn't happened," he says. "And this is entirely applicable to a town of 400 as it is to a city of two million." Davar says we can learn a lot from this small regional cultural capital that's taking ownership of its culture through experiential tourism. With its soft environmental footprint, and the co-operative engagement of community members, businesses and their resources, it's a vital economic driver that requires little fi nancial investment with a potentially high rate of return. "When you talk about tourism at the community level, you're really talking about collaboration, how you get businesses working together. And when you get the whole community working together, that's economic development at its best." >> CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE Food for thought: Visitors to Dauphin might check out exhibits at the Watson Art Centre (left) and enjoy an elaborate lunch on a frozen lake too. Photos courtesy of Tourism Dauphin MBiz_spring2014.indd 16 MBiz_spring2014.indd 16 5/14/14 8:26:41 AM 5/14/14 8:26:41 AM

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