Our New Destination Events

Join us for our new events series, including the Frozen Wonderland Festival, a speakers series and new industry workshops.

We have some exciting events coming up in the next couple of months, starting with the Frozen Wonderland Festival launching next week and running until the end of February. The festival celebrates everything we love about winter with outdoor adventures, art & craft workshops and more.

The original plan was for the Frozen Wonderland Festival to happen over a single weekend. We have moved it to a winter-long event instead based on the feedback of our lodging partners who have limited availability and to make it easier for our activity partners to schedule their events.

We are also looking forward to hosting our first Speaker Series and Industry Workshops this winter and spring. We are hoping these talks and workshops will enhance our knowledge and skills in a variety of topics related to our region. We’re looking forward to hosting Jason Thompson for a workshop on storytelling, astronomer Alice Koning who will be sharing tips on interpreting our night skies, a tour of our scenic geology with Dale Leckie and more.  The schedule of events is available here with more speakers to be added in the next few weeks.

As we worked on these events we wanted to make sure that there were lots of opportunities for residents to join us in these adventures. Locals can go to the Community Days page on the website to sign up for these experiences for free or at a deeply discounted rate.

The historic Nordegg Golf Course
The historic Nordegg Golf Course
Lisa Lima from Travel Alberta presenting on the Ultimate Travellers

How You Can Participate

Events for Visitors

We’re looking for additional events to include in the Frozen Wonderland program as well as throughout the spring months. The best types of events for this are the ones that are not available on a daily basis. For example, a variation on your regular activities, a sample type tour where guests try a shorter version of your activities or offering a product that is usually sold as a private tour as a public one. It’s also a great way to test new ideas that can become part of your regular products in the future.

All events must have the appropriate permits and insurance. Contact us (annabelle@explorenordegg.ca) if you are looking at offering something new but need help with permits or logistics. We can often work together to solve this issue, whether it’s offering the activity with a partner who already has the proper permits or finding a venue to host your event.

Event registration, if required, should be available through the Explore Nordegg & Abraham Lake booking system.

You can find all the events for visitors here.

Events for Residents

These can be simply offering a special rate to locals on a visitor event or on your regular products for specific dates. Other options that work well include hosting an open house or offering a skills course.

The goal of these events is to make it easier for residents to try the activities we offer to visitors and to gain a better understanding of our visitor economy.

You can find all the events for residents here.

Industry Events

The first part is simple, participate. The workshops are open to all our partners and local tourism staff. Space is limited so make sure to sign up early for the ones that interest you.

The other part is the Showcase Adventures. These are FAM tours offered to industry partners and local tourism staff so that they can get first-hand experience with your products. These tours are slightly different than the ones offered to visitors and residents since you’ll want to make sure to include some time to share with the participants explaining how they can best promote your products to their guests. The discount on these activities is usually higher than on the Community Days tours since you expect to get more referrals and sales from them.

We’ll be hosting an industry social to help summer staff and industry partners get to know each other ahead of the busy season. We’re also offering two “orientation tours” in early June to help front-line staff get better acquainted with the region.

You can find all the industry events here.

If you have any questions or would like to host an event, please reach out to Annabelle (annabelle@explorenordegg.ca) to discuss your idea.

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This month we discussed tourism on public lands and ongoing trail initiatives.
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