Visitors hungry to explore region, says Tourism Lethbridge
By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on January 2, 2025.
Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Dominica Wojcik, Senior director of communications at Tourism Lethbridge reflected on 2024 and says it was a big year for them as they launched multiple local, provincial and national initiatives.LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com
A lot of visitors were hungry to explore Lethbridge last year, according to the city’s tourism expert.
Dominica Wojcik with Tourism Lethbridge says 2024 was a big year for culinary tourism, which took advantage of the city’s location along Canada’s premier food corridor.
“One of the big initiatives that we launched this year was our recipe book, which was a collaboration between local chefs, local producers and restaurants. We posted the recipe book on our website and we’ve had well over 800 downloads at this point,” says Wojcik.
This year, Tourism Lethbridge will launch its second round of recipe books and with plans to add even more recipes to them.
“We’re hoping that we can have hundreds of recipes to share with the local flair of Lethbridge, so we’re really excited about that,” says Wojcik.
Another big culinary initiative in 2024 was Savour Alberta’s South, which was a collaborative effort between Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Taber and the Crowsnest Pass.
“It’s really exciting to have all of us doing the promotion…as we have our Highway 3 Ale Trail, so it’s the same kind of partnership, with the same people but doing food now instead of just ale,” says Wojcik.
The first event within the Savour Alberta’s South was the Farm to Fork, highlight local restaurants that use locally produced items.
“It was a way to showcase all of them across southern Alberta and it was a national initiative which allowed us to have bigger reach than if we were just do something on our own,” says Wojcik.
 Last year was the third year of the Brighter Together Food Journey, a partnership between Tourism Lethbridge, Economic Development Lethbridge and the Lethbridge and District Exhibition.
Wojcik says the event showcased the food in our region, and brought in national and provincial media to learn about and showcase local food.
 Tourism Lethbridge also had a lot of local partnerships and attended more than 60 community events to support for the community and to help any visitors looking for things to do, while also having some fun themselves as well.
“We really work to elevate events, to make them more economically impactful for our community,” says Wojcik. “This year we helped events like the dragon boats, Oktoberfest, the block party, foodie fest, too many to name.”
 When multiple organizations work together, says Wojcik, they can generate a much higher economic impact from tourists staying overnight, shopping, eating local and checking out the attractions.
 “The other great local partnership that is currently going is our Snow Much Love campaign, which is a partnership between ourselves, Downtown BRZ, Economic Development Lethbridge and the Chamber of Commerce to promote shopping and exploring local and getting people to do that in our city,” says Wojcik.
Beyond the city, Wojcik says Tourism Lethbridge worked with the Tourism industry Association of Canada on a marketing readiness program and with Travel Alberta on tourism development zones. This year they focused a lot in making sure their destination is in alignment across the province and across Canada to be certain that they are not out of line when creating initiatives.
“Travel Alberta identified 10 zones in Alberta that are the top priorities when it comes to tourism and we are working towards making that zone which is from here to Medicine Hat.”
Another highlight of 2024 was meetings and convention planning. Wojcik says Tourism Lethbridge reps went to several national meetings and trade show events to showcase Lethbridge as a premier destination for hosting events.
 A lot of that work was done in partnership with the Agri-Food Hub and Trade Centre to showcase it and other venues across the city that can host vents.
 “We were lucky enough through this initiative to not only find many leads, but to also bring them down for FAM (familiarization) trips and showcase the city to them,” says Wojcik. “From these FAM trips we actually secured the fire chiefs conference that will be coming in 2028.”
Tourism Lethbridge was also able to secure their Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) conference which will take place in Lethbridge this year.
“Based on some of the work this year and in previous years, we have over 50 events that are in our pipeline, which means that if we landed all of those events, we would have over $33 million in economic impact coming into our city between now and 2029,.”
As for sport tourism, Wojcik says the Lethbridge Sport Tourism brand was launched in 2024, which unifies the city and community as a sport tourism hub.
“We’re really excited to go into it as Lethbridge Sport Tourism rather than going into it as Tourism Lethbridge or as Lethbridge Sport Council or the Curling Club,” she says. “We’re going into it unified as Lethbridge Sport Tourism.”
The wholistic approach is not about tourism first, or about sports being first, but about Lethbridge being first as a destination for sporting events.
 “It’s a very community minded brand and we’re really excited to use it to bid on events in national markets to hopefully attract some more events into our city,” says Wojcik.
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lethbridge has an excellent live music/theatre scene – kudos to the players and providers for providing us a steady feed of high quality artistry!
beyond that: visitors come here for costco in general, and costco liquor foremost…although they may each at some point take a picture of the high level bridge. and, they leave very happy that their downtown situation is hardly as bleak as is ours.