As mayor of Regina, Pat Fiacco was a tireless promoter for the city.
Now, the longtime municipal politician who pushed the phrase "I love Regina" during his time in office has turned his attention toward promoting the whole province as the new CEO of Tourism Saskatchewan.
Fiacco took over his new role last fall, almost immediately after leaving the mayor's chair in Regina. Now, Fiacco spends his time going across the province promoting the tourism industry, as he did Thursday at a luncheon hosted by the Battlefords Tourism and Convention Association.
"It's easy to take all that we have here for granted," said Fiacco to those gathered at the Northland Power Curling Centre. "We sometimes forget how massive Saskatchewan is and how impressive our geographical features are."
His two-day visit to the Battlefords included attending the Centennial Gala for the city of North Battleford Wednesday evening and meetings with local tourism officials Thursday.
It was the latest in Fiacco's tour of the province in his new role as CEO. In the past weeks Fiacco had been in the Southwest twice in and around the Cypress Hills area, and had been in the southeast. He expects to visit other parts of the province as well in the next few months.
Fiacco has taken on CEO duties at a time of major changes in the way tourism is marketed in Saskatchewan.
Last year Tourism Saskatchewan became a Crown corporation, with the Tourism Saskatchewan Act proclaimed July 1.
Five purposes were identified in that legislation as a direction for the organization. One is to market Saskatchewan as a tourism destination, nationally and internationally.
To that end Fiacco pointed to the launch of an ad campaign in the past week. The commercials have aired on television and are a departure from what had been done before, with the word "Saskatchewan" featured in colorful block letters.
"You're going to see a different look to the ads," said Fiacco, noting the new commercials are already running outside the province in Alberta and elsewhere.
Other mandates of Tourism Saskatchewan include assisting tourism operators to market their products, to develop and promote the quality of tourism, to provide visitor information services and to undertake any other activities and functions.
Fiacco also outlined the structure of the organization that includes corporate services, industry and community development, and marketing and communications. In that latter category, Fiacco said Mary Taylor-Ash is joining Tourism Saskatchewan as executive director in marketing and communications.
She moves here from Newfoundland and Labrador, where she was assistant deputy minister for tourism. Fiacco noted the tourism campaign in Newfoundland and Labrador was one Saskatchewan and others have looked to emulate. He noted their ads were "very powerful. They really bring out emotion."
Fiacco also pledged in the months ahead there would be the development of a strategic plan for Tourism Saskatchewan that, he told the audience, will "help us develop the proper budgets to support the planning."
It is not just the provincial organization seeing change at the moment.
Significant local changes have happened with the recent expansion in responsibilities for Battlefords Tourism. The organization reorganized and expanded its scope of duties to include convention and marketing for the wider area earlier this year. A new board is in place and Malcolm Anderson of Gold Eagle Lodge took on duties as the new chair this spring.
Fiacco pledged Tourism Saskatchewan would be a "supportive ally" of the newly-expanded organization. He also pledged support for the other tourism partners and made the point that marketing the province's attractions would need to be a team effort.
"The days of marketing your own single destination are over," said Fiacco.
As an example of what he was talking about, Fiacco pointed to what happens when people go on vacation to Disneyland.
"When you're in Disneyland you're not just spending your time in Disneyland - you're going to a number of other tourism destinations within a 100 kilometre radius of Disneyland, maybe even farther."
Fiacco pointed to how other tourism destinations there would "park their egos at the door" and seek to attract those same visitors.
He pointed to an example of the same approach being done with the website for Cypress Hills. "They're jointly marketing that entire region," he said.
Fiacco expressed willingness to listen to concerns and said that for Tourism Saskatchewan to be successful, all the partners needed to be successful as well and vice versa. "We can't do it alone," he said.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Fiacco fielded a question about one of his biggest projects when he was mayor of Regina: the new stadium to be built there.
That question - posed from the floor by Battleford mayor Derek Mahon - gave Fiacco another opportunity to promote that project's benefits.
Among them, Fiacco noted, was to build not only tourism infrastructure in the province but community infrastructure as well. "This is very important to ensuring that your citizens want to be here, want to stay here, and others want to be here as well," said Fiacco.
