Local tourism workers’ contributions celebrated

By Lethbridge Herald on May 22, 2025.

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Lethbridge Herald

Tourism Lethbridge celebrated frontline workers within the industry by throwing a party for them on Wednesday afternoon, where they could win prizes and early access to an app that linked them to tourist attractions across the city. 

Erin Crane, CEO of Tourism Lethbridge said it is important to them to celebrate and highlight the people that interact with visitors first-hand as they are an important piece of the tourism industry. 

“Those people that welcome our visitors to our community, whether it’s at one of our hotels, restaurants, gas stations, we have bank representatives here today,” said Crane. 

She explained that people usually think visitors just go to tourist spots, but they find themselves integrated into our community while they are here. 

“So, being able to answer that question about what is there to see and do in Lethbridge while I’m here… that’s what we are here for, to provide them that information,” said Crane.  

When speaking about gearing up for a potentially busier than usual Summer, Crane said that this year is even more important to provide visitors a welcoming atmosphere. 

“And being open and celebrating tourism, and what they do is so important to that process. We continuously talk about engaged employees equals engaged visitors,” said Crane. 

She said that by keeping visitors engaged, they spend more money in our community and that is an important piece, as the idea is to attract visitors to stay as long as possible. 

“We want them staying longer, we want them spending more money, we want them moving around the city and seeing all the amazing things that we have to see and do,” said Crane. 

During the event, Crane said they were going to show those in attendance videos of tourism attractions across the city and provide information about them, so they could in turn share it with visitors that come their way. 

“Every 30 minutes, we are going to be giving away a prize, so that way this industry can get out and explore everything is going on,” said Crane. 

She said the idea behind that was to prepare them to be able to provide visitors with recommendations, as they would have the opportunity to visit the attractions themselves.

“And today we are soft launching our Explore Lethbridge app, which means that everybody in attendance today gets access to that app, and when they show that app at the attractions, they can enter for free,” said Crane. 

She said they want them to be able to explore those tourism attractions and see them first-hand, get them talking about them to visitors.