Riverfront Chalets and My Newfoundland Adventures have both grown in their respective niches, but not everyone wants to play outside.
Mark McCarthy has owned McCarthy’s Party Ltd., a destination management company, since 1982. He sells a good number of individual tours, but meetings, conventions and incentive travel is a substantial part of his livelihood. “[Companies] are coming to Newfoundland because it’s a reward program. They generally pick locations that are perceived to be exotic, and Newfoundland is a destination that’s largely just becoming discovered by the rest of Canada. Plus it’s a place that a lot of people aren’t going to get on their own right away. So, when the company says ‘this year we’re going to Newfoundland’, the people working there get excited about it.”
McCarthy offers groups a standard array of East Coast outdoor activities, like GPS hiking on the East Coast Trail (which follows traditional coastal trails along the Avalon Peninsula), or sea kayaking with a ‘boil up’ on the beach. One of McCarthy’s most predictably popular events is the ‘Rally in the Alley’, a four-stop pub crawl on St. John’s infamous George Street. The pub crawl features dancing, trivia, and (naturally) a Screech-In.
“We needed to have something for everyone to enjoy, y’know?” says Debbie Patton a conference and event planner with London Life in Ontario. “Rally in the Ally was like that, and they had it (organized) down to the minute.”
“It really depends on what they want to accomplish as a group. Sometimes they want something really strenuous, a real challenge,” says McCarthy, “and sometimes they want something that’s just pure fun.” Music and beer aren’t exactly a hard sell, but it’s more than that. The pub crawl is a good time but it’s also focused on giving outsiders a look at (one version at least of) Newfoundland’s fun-loving culture.
If McCarthy’s Party and My Newfoundland Adventures are doing well with their very different product offerings, then someone offering both cultural and outdoor experiences would seem to be ideally positioned in the marketplace.
At least, that’s what Todd Whyte, manager of the Ocean View Hotel, is hoping. The Ocean View is located inside Gros Morne National Park (a UNESCO World Heritage site), and Whyte has just begun to offer team building packages. Instead of trying to serve those packages inhouse, he has worked with local operators to establish a diverse array of choices, everything from outdoor activity in the Park, to food and music-focused events. “If they (meeting and convention planners) are looking to come for three or four days and we can offer an add-on that gets them outside and active, or doing something they wouldn’t normally do, that makes the trip more attractive and expands the business,” said Whyte.
Corporate excursions have a healthy history, and the bonding properties of outdoor adventure have been a given since, well, business moved inside. But taking corporate groups outside is something relatively new to the game, and Newfoundland seems poised to be a go-to destination in the growing industry. The infrastructure is here, the outdoors is not only enormous but accessible, and the island is at a unique geographic center point between London, Toronto and New York. It may not be known as a golf vacation, but in a world where business people buy Gore-Tex™ coats that would have made well known explorer Louis Jolliet drool, outdoor team building in Newfoundland and Labrador seems like a hole in one.
