New Travel Nunavut president leads plan for industry growth
Alex Stubbing officially stepped into the role on Sept. 9; organization holds conference in Iqaluit this week
Travel Nunavut’s new president Alex Stubbing is stepping into the role after many years as a public servant with the Government of Nunavut. (Photo courtesy of Alex Stubbing)
As the new president of Travel Nunavut, Alex Stubbing hopes to help the organization achieve its goal of making the territory’s travel sector a billion-dollar-a-year industry employing 5,000 people by 2030.
Stubbing, who was born and raised in Iqaluit, comes to Travel Nunavut after nearly two decades with the Government of Nunavut, Nunavut Parks, and Parks Canada.
He held various positions with the GN, including assistant deputy minister of culture and heritage. He officially stepped into Travel Nunavut’s top spot on Sept. 9.
This week, Stubbing is involved with the organization’s annual conference taking place in Iqaluit. It was at last year’s conference that Travel Nunavut set its goal of becoming a billion-dollar-a-year industry by 2030.
“All of those roles really prepared me in a neat way for the different challenges that I’ll experience in this new role as the president and CEO of Travel Nunavut,” he said in an interview.
Stubbing splits his time between Iqaluit and Ottawa.
“We believe our path to growing the travel industry falls in hand with our strategic plan,” he said.
He outlined a six-pillar approach that includes marketing, community engagement, involvement in community growth, advocating for infrastructure, creating partnerships, and developing industry intelligence.
As president, Stubbing said he hopes to create a study to measure the growth of the industry year to year.
“If we do a baseline economic impact study now, that will give us a much better idea of where we are and where we need to go. And hopefully, we can do that study every year or every second year and see the growth,” he said.
He also pointed to Travel Nunavut’s advocacy for improvements to infrastructure in the aviation, shipping and cruise industries to increase the capacity of services.
“We’re going to need to start building runways that these newer aircraft can actually land on, those are some of the key initiatives we want to continue to grow,” he said.
“You get new infrastructure, you have a growing population and it all just has a domino effect on the growth of the industry.”
Stubbing was asked how much revenue the travel industry generated this year and how many people are employed in the industry, but he only referenced numbers from 2019.
Travel Nunavut’s annual conference began Wednesday in Iqaluit at the Frobisher Inn and runs until Friday.
The conference agenda includes panel sessions, presentations on industry updates, an awards ceremony, and two training sessions for members.
“This will be a great chance for our members and stakeholders in the travel industry to come together,” Stubbing said.
Congratulations Alex!
What does it say about the viability of the tourism sector in Nunavut when the head of its tourism industry association does not even live in the Territory.
That is too cold😆
The campaign should say something like:
“For only $10k per person you can come aboard our fine airline and enjoy a relaxing week in a one star hotel in a small community littered with junk and loose dogs with really nothing to do.”
Travel Nunavut are u hiring?
Hopefully one day Nunavut can legitimately compete with Greenland for tourism dollars. United is even now offering direct flights from NYC to Nuuk now. Good luck to this guy, hes got mountains to climb.
A $1 billion industry. That’s about what airfare will soon cost, yeah.
“We’re going to need to start building runways that these newer aircraft can actually land on”
Since the Feds cant be bothered to invest in the north, my suggestion is let US Air Force pave and maintain the runways like they did in Alaska and Greenland and then let them use the runways for training exercises while we get nice paved runways modern jets can land on. Its a win-win.
Thats a great idea. !!!
Just like to they do here in Inuvik,
We have paved roads and a runway for the military,
Maybe put a military base in Pelly Bay and Coppermine, Spence Bay, Eskimo Point, Igloolik, Hall Beach and Cape Dorset? It’s really good a tires, and truck suspension, I’ve had my truck for 40 years,
We don’t know those places.
Look them up.
Kugaaruk, aka Pelly Bay
Taloyoak aka Spence Bay
Kugluktuk aka Coppermine
Kinngait aka Cape Dorset
Arviat aka Eskimo Point
Sanirajak aka Hall Beach
Igloolik aka Iglulik
Concern of who will have priority JOBS as Inuit always least employed in Communities. Tired of Inuit have no Experience in Keeping JOBS.
Ferry to labrador it’s not a far stretch and will allow us to take our vehicles south for holiday and bring our sealift supplies back with us
He will bring back the dignity, ethics and ethical tax payer use of funding to this organization that has been missing for years.
This is a fantasy of deluded people that like squandering tax payers money.billion dollar tourist industry.runways are going to appear magically from southland in 6 yrs,is this kalluna a loon or on drugs..if not he should be..try magic mushrooms and read alice in tundra land or try the yellow prick road.lol..another waste all in the plan,plans take a lot of money not lip service from naive imbeciles that grew up in iqaluit.bizzare
So what was tourism revenue? Even if data is from 2019? No way near $1B I suppose