Planning for growth, Travel Nunavut announces leadership changes
Association focused on growing travel industry to generate billion dollars annually by 2030
Silver Endeavour, a cruise ship carrying almost 200 guests, stops for a tour of Kinngait on July 19. Travel Nunavut is hoping to create a billion-dollar travel industry in the territory by 2030, which would mean a lot more cruise ships like these. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)
Travel Nunavut has a new leader to help it reach its goal of becoming a billion-dollar-a-year industry employing 5,000 people by the year 2030.
The organization, with close to 150 members including hotels, airlines, artists and small businesses, named Alex Stubbing as its new president on July 31.
“Alex has a great background in terms of working with a number of agencies, governments and organizations and bringing people together to come up with the right solutions,” said Ed Romanowski, board chairperson at Travel Nunavut, in an interview with Nunatsiaq News.
Stubbing has held various positions with Parks Canada, Nunavut Parks and the Government of Nunavut, where he was assistant deputy minister for culture and heritage.
Alex Stubbing, a longtime public servant with the Government of Nunavut, will step into the role of president of Travel Nunavut in September. (Photo courtesy of Outcrop Communications)
He will begin his new Travel Nunavut position Sept. 9.
“He’s quite well known, having worked in Nunavut for a long period of time. He’s worked in smaller communities and larger ones, taken on larger mandates with the GN as well so that will be important,” Romanowski of Stubbing.
Last November, Travel Nunavut announced its goal of growing the territory’s travel and tourism sector into a billion-dollar-a-year industry employing 5,000 people by 2030.
It was reported then that in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the industry employed 3,000 people and had an annual economic impact of $400 million.
Romanowski said Travel Nunavut hopes to complete its new economic impact study, with updated data, in time for its annual conference schedued for Nov. 6 to 8 in Iqaluit.
“We as a travel industry are looking to build on what is the most important lifeline to the 25 communities of Nunavut and is an important part of the day-to-day lives of everyone,” he said of the industry’s economic impact.
“The travel industry is the second-largest economic generator of income and jobs in Nunavut, and we know it’s going to grow.”
In addition to Stubbing’s hiring, the travel association also announced appointments to three executive positions.
Norine Naguib is the association’s new executive director; Kristine Prud’homme becomes director of marking support and administration; and Colin Allooloo is director of membership and engagement.
Curious… where will he be working from? One would think that the best promotion of Nunavut would be having the individual actually living in Nunavut….. pretty sure that isn’t the case here!
Can I get some of what Travel Nunavut is smoking?
You can take a ship north, why can’t we take one south?
Did he move back to Nunavut??
Also, why is his picture so strange ?
This is impossible check all the other cities country make money not one
Why stop at a billion dollars? How about ten billion? How about a trillion? 😂😂😂
They need to publish the studies and methodology for context.
Most ‘tourism’ for hotels, air travel, restaurants etc. is likely government related travel.
Without actual numbers around the average earning per person in the employment figures, the data are meaningless.
Remove cruise ship stops, business and government travel and family/medical travel trips and you’re left with leisure travel. How much of this billion dollar goal will be attributed to true leisure trips?
Guessing 99%+ of nunavut travel dollars fall into one of the above categories, none of which should count towards this lofty $1,000,000,000 goal
If the person does not live in Nunavut, he does not deserve a salary in Nunavut. You have to be here to show tourists how beautiful it is. Not to mention it would be nice to meet the membership, at their businesses.
I agree, unless you are here suffering and in misery like the rest of us, you don’t deserve to be compensated as if you were.
I’d like to see a definition of what constitutes “tourism”. Is government travel – a GN employee from, say, Iqaluit going to Pond Inlet on duty travel and staying in the local hotel – considered to be tourism?
Also, to make Nunavut communities more attractive, compared with Greenland and Newfoundland, for example, most communities could do with a good coat of fresh paint.
To add to Kenn. Pick up garbage, remove derelict vehicle, 4×4, snowmobiles. You have a great number of people doing absolutely nothing. It does not take of lot of effort to make things better.
How will anyone afford to travel, lodge and buy stuff in their own Nunavut community with yearly carbon tax increases and hits $170 per tonne by 2030?
On top of that, the expensive Ecco jet fuel rolls out in a year. Airlines are to increase blending it in yearly. Who will be able to fly? Forget the tourist, what will happen with medical travel?