Touting tourism in the city of Timmins: new city position exploring sports and recreational tourism.

• Author: Stewart, Nick
• Position: TIMMINS

Tourism may not be the first thing that comes to mind when discussing Timmins, but in the city's first industry-specific management role at City Hall, Andrea Griener is looking to change that.

As manager of culture, recreation and visitor services with the City of Timmins, Griener has spent much of her first year establishing the department's focus and repositioning city staff to accommodate those ideas.

"In Timmins, our visitors are not what I think a lot of people consider tourists, because we are a regional service centre," says Griener, who has worked in the city's planning department as well as the provincial Ministry of Tourism.

"We have a lot of people that come to Timmins for shopping, for medical appointments, for hockey tournaments, so our focus is on the quality of experience."

This means taking a harder look at pushing through, not just the "traditional" northeastern Ontario market, but also to the First Nations coastal communities and northwestern Quebec. It means looking at the value and potential use of its existing tourism assets, which include the Shania Twain Centre.

Although the site primarily acts as a showcase for its namesake, city officials are looking at new ways of offsetting its sinking revenues.

Ticket sales during July and August 2007, considered the peak months of the season, reached $9,000 in each. Since then, visitation to the centre has continued to drop, sinking by a third in those peak months to $6,000 in 2009.

In particular, the number of visitors from the United States has dropped off, though there has been a slight increase in the number of visitors from southern Ontario and Europe.

As Twain releases a new album, ticket sales to the centre "go through the roof," says Griener. However, with Twain's last album having been released in 2002, city officials are looking at expanding the scope of the site to focus on other local performers as well.

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Other solutions are also being considered, including enhancing the centre's status as a performing arts centre.

"It's quite a nice intimate location as well, so it could really lend itself to a variety of performances there, and we're going to explore that opportunity this year."

Sales for the Gold Mine Tour, which is connected to the centre, have remained static over the last three years. It's hoped that upgrades, such as the addition of interactive components and the extension of the visitation period through...