The Tourism Industry Association of Ontario (TIAO) has released Forward Motion: A Strategic Playbook for Ontario's Tourism Industry 2025–2030, a sector-led strategy designed to align, energize, and grow Ontario's visitor economy over the next five years. Co-created through province-wide consultation with over 650 operators, Indigenous leaders, DMOs, regional tourism organizations, and municipal stakeholders, this is the most comprehensive tourism strategy Ontario has seen in years.
And for a region like ours, rural, diverse, and bravely navigating what sustainable tourism leadership actually looks like in practice, it couldn't come at a better time.
Why This Strategy Matters Right Now
Ontario's tourism sector is at a turning point. After years of disruption, visitor spending is projected to reach over $30 billion in 2025, and the strategy sets an ambitious target of 4% year-over-year growth through 2030. Achieved with coordinated action, that growth trajectory would generate $38.1 billion in visitor spending, 313,000 direct tourism jobs, and $13.7 billion in tax revenue provincially.
But here's the honest message from the strategy: those numbers won't happen on their own. Without aligned, strategic investment, Ontario sits at roughly 2% growth, leaving billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs on the table. The time to act collectively is now.
For BruceGreySimcoe, this is a call we're ready to answer.
Six Strategic Pillars: All Relevant to Our Region
The strategy is built around six interconnected pillars, and each one speaks directly to the realities faced by operators and partners across our region, from the shores of Lake Huron, Georgian Bay, and Lake Simcoe, to the ski hills of Grey and Simcoe counties and the vibrant downtowns of Owen Sound, Orillia, Barrie, and Collingwood.
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Attract More Visitors & Spending: The strategy calls for coordinated marketing between provincial, regional, and local partners. For our DMOs, municipalities, and operators, this means more opportunities to plug into provincial campaigns while telling the authentic stories of the people, places, and communities that make our region unique.
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Expand Transportation Infrastructure: Rural and northern access gaps are explicitly named as barriers to growth. Across BruceGreySimcoe, connectivity looks different from community to community, but the need for improvement is shared across the entire region. Better access, whether by road, transit, or other modes, means more visitors reaching more of what our region has to offer.
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Strengthen Workforce Resilience: Labour shortages, seasonal staffing challenges, and housing pressures are real for our operators. This pillar focuses on long-term, values-driven workforce solutions, reframing tourism careers as purposeful and sustainable, with new training investments and partnerships with post-secondary institutions.
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Facilitate Product Development & Capacity Investment: This pillar prioritizes access to investment tools, technology adoption, Indigenous-led tourism development, and year-round capacity building, all critical to our region's continued growth.
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Advance Practical Sustainability: Sustainability is something our region is actively navigating, and we won't pretend it's simple. Supporting operators across Grey, Bruce, and Simcoe counties to adopt meaningful, practical sustainability practices across social, economic, and environmental dimensions is a real challenge. But it's one we're committed to moving through, together. The strategy validates the direction we're heading and reinforces that practical, accessible sustainability support (not mandates) is the right approach. It calls for voluntary certification pathways and toolkits that translate good intentions into everyday business practice, and that's exactly the kind of support we're working to build alongside our operators.
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Foster Collaboration & Leadership: One of the strategy's most important insights is that the biggest barrier to progress isn't a lack of ideas, it's a lack of structural clarity. This pillar calls for clearer roles, shared governance, and collective accountability. As RTO7, we've always believed that strong regional partnerships are the foundation of a thriving visitor economy, and this strategy backs that up.
What Comes Next
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Forward Motion strategy is industry-led, government-enabled, and market-driven. That means the responsibility for bringing it to life rests with all of us: operators, DMOs, municipalities, regional tourism organizations, and sector partners working in the same direction.
At BruceGreySimcoe, we're committed to being an active part of this province-wide movement. We look forward to the opportunity to bring our collective experience and unique perspective to steering committees that will be formed by TIAO in the coming year.
We encourage every tourism stakeholder in our region to read the strategy, understand where your work fits, and reach out to us to explore how we can move forward together.
Read the full Forward Motion strategy by downloading it here. For more information, visit tiaoontario.ca.