Experiential tourism is defined as "....creating experiences that engage visitors in a series of memorable activities, revealed over a period of time, that are inherently personal, engage the senses, and makes connections on an emotional, physical, spiritual, or intellectual level."
Earth Rhythms provides the following experiential tourism consulting services:
- Workshop facilitation: Creating and facilitating customized experiential tourism workshops for tourism businesses and communities. These interactive and transformative workshops are developed to actively engage tourism business owners and operators, community development officers, economic development officers, and tourism service businesses to learn about experiential tourism, product development, and trends in experiential tourism.
- Experiential tourism business development coach: Providing one-on-one business assistance to individual tourism business owners and operators, economic development associations, community development officers, and non-profit organizations to help them learn how to craft and execute successful experiential tourism products and programs. Assistance with product development, niche market identification, experiential programming and interpretation techniques, and packaging are all featured as part of this type of mentoring and coaching.
- Workshop presentations and conference keynote presentations: Providing inspiring presentations, with examples, designed to provide provocative propositions about creating community and private operator shifts in tourism business to emphasize local community experiences.
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to let us know how we might help your community or conference to use experiential tourism workshops and presentations to benefit your community or tourism industry partners. Or, please call Celes Davar at 1.888.301.0030.
Celes Davar of Earth Rhythms is a trained facilitator and trainer. He creates and delivers customized tourism workshops featuring experiential tourism training. Workshops are customized to your needs. We partner with a number of leading Canadian associates in experiential tourism to provide specific components of the experiential tourism development cycle: market research, product development, marketing, web marketing, business development, and community partnerships.
Recent Workshops
Celes has been working with the following communities, organizations, and businesses helping them to make a shift from traditional tourism services to creating innovative tourism experiences as commercially viable tourism products, generating new revenues and new community business opportunities:
- Edge of the Wedge Experiential Tourism Training: A leading edge professional development course for the Gros Morne Institute for Sustainable Tourism (GMIST) delivered in Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland. Delivered in partnership with Todd Lucier (Northern Edge Algonquin, Ontario) and Dr. Nancy Arsenault (Dean, Faculty of Tourism & Hotel Management, Royal Roads University, Victoria, B.C.). Over 500 participants trained in Atlantic Canada since 2005 in 18 courses. This training continues throughout 2009, with 46 graduates having completed the April training in Rocky Harbour.
- LaCloche Manitoulin Business Assistance Corporation contracted Earth Rhythms to develop a year-long professional development training program for Manitoulin area arts, culture, farming, and tourism operations partners. Purpose: Learn about the potential of experiential tourism, community collaboration, partnerships, and advanced tactics in experiential tourism web marketing. Celes Davar and Todd Lucier developed and facilitated the training. Ongoing...October, 2008 - May, 2009 See the results of how the workshop has resulted in a community that has partnered to create a collaborative website offering web content, packages, tourism experiences, and the partners provide regular content in text, photos, and video about the unique Manitoulin area, featuring Authentic Manitoulin Island People, Places, and Experiences.
- Annapolis-Digy Economic Development Agency (Annapolis, Digby, Cornwallis, Nova Scotia) invited Earth Rhythms to customize culinary and advanced experiential tourism workshops in November, 2008. Celes Davar created an innovative workshop bringing together producers from land and sea, chefs, local tourism operators, Parks Canada staff, economic development officers and restaurateurs for a Culinary Tourism Workshop. The Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia is one of the three best locations in Canada where food presentation-culinary and experiential tourism-food production can be well-focused on visitor experiences focusing on local production and rich authenticity of local people.. See Press Review about workshop. In addition, Celes Davar and Todd Lucier co-facilitated an Advanced Experiential Tourism workshop providing tourism operators and partners opportunities to begin linking experiential tourism product development to innovative web-marketing. Hands-on learning; cluster groups; rapid learning and application of web marketing concepts.
- Government of Nunatsiavut: Tourism Leadership Voyage best practices mission. This customized study trip to Ecuador and The Galapagos Islands in May, 2008 involved the creation of over 25 different experiences in which participants explored "the how and what of experiential tourism and sustainable tourism" through "visitor eyes". This study trip involved the facilitation of daily learning with a team of 12 individuals (tourism operators, community economic development officers, Parks Canada officials, the director of tourism for the Nunatsiavut government, and other community representatives involved in tourism implementation). Learn more by reading and viewing the various experiences, participant feedback, and other insights about this Tourism Leadership Voyage at:http://tlv08eg.wordpress.com/about/
- Tourism Nova Scotia. Product Development Day - a customized experiential tourism professional develompent workshop. 160 participants. In collaboration with Dr. Nancy Arsenault, Dean, Tourism and Hotel Management. Royal Roads University, Victoria, B.C. Presentations, workshops, activities. Celes facilitated the creation and delivery of a customized experiences with DRUM ( A Nova Scotia cultural performing percussion ensemble and production) and DRUM creator Brookes Diamond.
- Regional government of Nunatsiavut, Newfoundland & Labrador. Stepping Stones. 2007 Celes Davar created and delivered a series of five community workshops about experiential tourism, examining local inventories, community collaboration, and learning how to create experiences that reflect people and their traditions, culture, and nature of Nunatsiavut. ( View and learn more here about Stepping Stones - creating new experiences along the north-east coast of Labrador.), July, 2007
- Lakehead University and Lake Helen First Nation, North Shore of Superior. Experience Superior. October, 2007 - Created and facilitated a two-day workshop about experiential tourism with 4 First Nation communities and 8 other communities along the north shore of Lake Superior. This project demonstrated a collaborative joint venture between Lakehead University and Lake Helen First Nation (Red Rock Indian Band). View and learn more about Experience Superior. Download a news report about this project.
- The Annapolis Digby Economic Development Agency, in partnership with NS Economic Development, NS Tourism, Culture & Heritage, and the Applied Geomatics Institute organized Fundy Riches and Valley Traditions, an experiential tourism workshop delivered in mid November, 2007. Read all about the workshop in this article by Carolyn Sloan, for the Annapolis-Digby Spectator (photos included). Dr. Bob Maher provides a short review of the benefits of the workshop.
- City of Dauphin, Manitoba (Product Launch press release) - coaching city of Dauphin businesses and non-profit partners to create fully packaged, priced and saleable experiences to leisure and trade partners, 2006, 2007, on-going.
- Tourism PEI. Rural Experiential Tourism Workshops. Crafting Tourism Experiences, a series of product development workshops for PEI Tourism operators. 2008-2009. This has resulted in a whole series of new and innovative experiences on the Tourism PEI website called Once In A Lifetime Experiences.
- South Shore Tourism Association (PEI) - a 2-day workshop to explore the potential for Geocaching and other forms of experiential tourism along the south shore of PEI, October, 2006
- City of St. John's - to assist city tourism businesses and cultural sector partners to learn how to craft interactive experiences. A 1-day workshop in which participants were facilitated to "go behind the scenes" in the world of theatre, with Mary Walsh and her new screenplay High Steel) 2006
- CDEM (The Economic Development Council for Manitoba Bilingual Municipalities) - 2006, 2007 A series of community tourism, economic development and geocaching capacity building workshops for the francophone communities.
- Baccalieu Trail Tourism Association (Baccalieu region, eastern Newfoundland) February, 2007 - Created and facilitated a two-day workshop in which the Baccalieu Trail Tourism Association business partners took part in a series of unique experiences about their community, history, and heritage to assess their potential to create and deliver unique new, saleable Baccalieu region tourism experiences.
