By Adam K. Johnson -- It’s another busy day for Ragnar Wesstrom, owner-operator of Enodah Wilderness Travel and Trout Rock Lodge just west of Yellowknife. He’s ferrying around Japanese tourists in his trademark Hagglunds BV206 track machine and dealing with an expansion to the lodge, all while taking care of the local corporate group that has taken the place over for the week. It’s so busy, in fact, he doesn’t have time to talk.

“Is there any chance we can do this via e-mail, since I am never able to talk on the phone?” he asks, fittingly, via e-mail. Between the aurora tours and visitors scheduled to come in from China, Korea, Japan and the U.S., it doesn’t look like Wesstrom’s dance card is going to be free any time soon.

“We are 85 per cent booked for the upcoming summer fishing season and already have inquiries from corporate groups wanting to book the lodge for meetings and team-building weekends,” he writes after a long day of work. “For our 16th annual fly-fishing derby [in July] we only have three spots left.”

Just another day, perhaps. But what’s unusual about the scenario is what it doesn’t tell us: that the country is being wracked by the worst economic downturn in a generation, layoffs and shutdowns are becoming the norm nationwide, and fear – fear that is creeping North of Sixty – has investors hiding under their beds. With major declines in natural-resource exploration, all three territories are feeling the pinch, and this affects the North’s hospitality industry – the hotel, restaurant and tourism operators who give travellers shelter, food and things to do while they’re here.

The industry brings nearly 400,000 people and $327-million in muchneeded cash to the territories every year. But with people travelling and spending less as they fret over lost jobs and a sick economy, where does that leave the North’s hoteliers and restaurateurs? Are they being flattened by the recession?

“Actually, things are going good, believe it or not,” says Derek Carmody, general manager of the Yellowknife Inn. “We’re holding our own so far this year.”

Carmody says his 9-room hotel is wellpositioned to handle what the economy may throw at it in the coming year. The hotel wrapped up a much-needed $3.5-million facelift last summer, giving the interior and suites a complete makeover. Further expansions to banquet and meeting spaces are in the works, with a new boiler and heating system on the way – all expected to wrap up this year. “We’d be in a much worse position right now if we didn’t do the renovations. The property was very tired. Now there’s nothing left of what you would have seen before.”

The mood is similarly positive out on Yellowknife’s Ingraham Trail, where Aurora Village – the city’s last major Northern Lights tourism company after competitor Aurora World closed shop in November – isn’t feeling the pinch. “We haven’t been affected too much yet,” says general manager Hideo Nagatani. “Many people decided to book late last year. If we’re going to get a crunch, it might be later on [this year] or in the coming year.”

Nagatani says Aurora Village’s numbers have been bolstered somewhat by overflow from Aurora World’s bookings. But he’s hopeful the Japanese tourism market – which has been declining in Yellowknife since 2001 – won’t take another hit from the economic crisis, as a dropping dollar and falling travel costs make Canada a more enticing destination. And if it does get bad, Nagatani says the company will just keep doing what it does best: giving visitors a unique view of an amazing natural light show. “If things turn sour, we’ll just have to ride out the storm.”

Carmody says the constant headlines and whisperings of catastrophe have penetrated his mental armour somewhat. But he, too, is prepared to wait things out. “I think it’s still in the early stages. The economy has been going so well for so long now that everybody [in the North] got caught off guard,” he says. “Up here, I think we’re going to weather this out.”

Like Carmody, Wesstrom credits good timing for his company’s recent success. Expansions to Trout Rock Lodge will add 16 more guest beds, improve and upgrade meeting and conference facilities, and add new boats, solar panels and other amenities – a far cry from the company’s humble canvas-tent beginnings back in 1988. By summer, Wesstrom says, Enodah will have a much stronger product to sell. Of course, he still gives most of the credit to the good old-fashioned elbow grease he and his wife, Doreen, have applied over the last 20 years. “We just get up earlier in the morning and work a little bit harder,” he says. “With the recession going on in the world, there are great opportunities out there if a company or person have capital to invest.” If you talk to the experts, this is the attitude they say the North’s hospitality industry needs.

Beth Walters is the CEO of PKF Consulting, a company that watches trends and hands out advice in the hospitality and tourism industries. She says her company has been watching the North for some time, and the advice she has for the Arctic isn’t much different than what she doles out to locals from her office in downtown Vancouver. “In my view, things should be business as usual,” she says.

In the hospitality industry, the need to reinvest capital in buildings and amenities is a continuing process. Without reinvestment, destinations stagnate and begin to lose caché and clientele – the last thing any business can risk in a recession. “Similarly, marketing... you don’t want to cut back on marketing in bad times. You need to market as much as ever.”

According to PKF’s numbers, hotel stays were down around the country last year (including the Yukon and NWT) by two per cent, with expectations that the trend will continue in 2009. However, Walters is convinced the crisis won’t be prolonged for the industry, so long as companies are smart about how they cope with it. That means holding steady on prices while looking for new ways to get the word out about destinations. “While you want to attract people and give good value, you need to charge an appropriate amount for what you offer – that’s where hotels get in trouble,” she says. “They start to undercut each other then they don’t have enough capital to replace things.”

Walters says undercutting won’t solve the major issue: increasing the overall number of visitors to the North. “All it does is create a downward spiral of facilities in poor repair.” To get more people to come North, she says, various government agencies and the competing businesses they represent are going to have to work together.

This is exactly what the Yukon government’s Department of Tourism and Culture is trying to achieve. One example: the three territories are working together on a marketing plan for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. “We’re not going in there just as the Yukon, we’re working together with the NWT and Nunavut,” says Denny Kobayashi, who manages North American marketing for the department. “We want to build on the success that we had working together on the 2007 marketing campaign for the Canada Winter Games. Jurisdictions that are normally competing are working together. It’s a bit unusual.”

e says the Yukon has earmarked some $6.2-million for the Olympics, $800,000 of which is set aside for marketing and media. Add this to $600,000 in new marketing dollars announced in this year’s budget, and you have a territory keen on taking the recession by the horns – vital for an industry that brings more than 300,000 people and $164-million in revenue to the territory.

“Everybody here is concerned,” says Robert Clark, manager of product development and research for the department. “We know the numbers will be down a bit, but we’ll wait and see what the real outcome is.” He points to partnerships with other territories and provinces on a number of initiatives, including international trade shows, as well as renewed efforts in international and online advertising, as good reasons to keep a positive outlook.

Adam Gerle, sales manager with both the Gold Rush Inn and the High Country Inn in Whitehorse, has been pounding the pulpit along with government representatives to promote the Yukon.

“Since the end of November I’ve been on the road constantly,” Gerle says. “We hosted lunches in Vancouver and Ottawa for meeting and conference planners and for sports tourism [organizers], we’ve teamed up with Air North to promote air and hotel packages out of Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary. We’ve also been in the trenches at trade shows. It’s good teamwork. We’re covering everything.”

He says the Gold Rush and High Country Inns have invested millions in the last year to upgrade Internet access, meeting areas, rooms and lounges to provide “as high a quality stay as you get in Vancouver or other big cities.”

And he says the redoubled effort isn’t a matter of desperation; it’s a preventative measure. “Actually our numbers are up from last year,” he says. “Our thoughts on that are if you offer a superior product and outstanding service, you can grow your business in good times and bad.”

Gerle and others say the Yukon has also been making inroads into Vancouver and the two other gateway cities – Calgary and Edmonton – to increase southern awareness of Canada’s Northern frontier. A recent campaign combines a series of billboard ads in major centres with large spreads in national magazines, all telling the stories of Canadian visitors to the territory. There’s a modern twist: The campaign encourages tourists to send in their own stories and YouTube videos to be shared online. The point, says Kobayashi, is to get Canadians thinking more about domestic tourism.

“Our thinking is ‘Let’s do something a little more interesting and engaging about Canadians travelling in their own country,’” Kobayashi says. “We’re leveraging new media and social media to get the word out about this.”

At the same time, the territory is trying its best to add value to tour packages, without racing to the bottom of the discount pool. Rather than slashing prices, Kobayashi says the territory is encouraging tourism operators to add bonuses and new features – such as community shuttles and more online services. “We’re trying to stay away from the heavy discounting that’s happening in the U.S. Everybody’s doing it,” he says. “That’s a slippery path.”

Domestic tourism is a market the NWT is exploring as well. With a smaller emphasis on tourism development than its western neighbour (the territory boasts 65,000 visitors and $137-million in revenue annually), the NWT’s marketing campaigns aren’t nearly as big and audacious, but one representative says it takes on a similar philosophy.

“[International] travel is declining,” says Richard Zieba, director of tourism and parks with the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment. “We don’t have enough money to turn around these travel numbers. There are tremendous travel deals available. The cost of access to the North and to Yellowknife has certainly been declining. This offers an opportunity www.igloo.ca // www.workatigloo.ca to market closer to home.”

In some cases, very close to home. Zieba says the NWT is encouraging its employees to spend time exploring the territories, or just to spend an extra day in a community they visit for work – music to the ears of business owners in the smaller communities. The territory is also putting money on the line to convince tourism businesses to broaden their reach. The Tourism Product Diversification and Marketing Program will make $1.5-million in grants available on April 1. “Don’t panic, diversify,” Zieba says. “The most successful businesses are the ones that diversify, that have their fingers in a lot of pies.”

That’s what Ragnar Wesstrom has done. Aside from his lodge, he runs Arctic Tracks, an international distributor for Hagglund all-terrain machines – imagine snowmobiles bulked up to the size of a minivan – that have become his company’s trademark. “We bring [the machines] in from Europe and sell or rent them mainly to oil, pipeline and mining companies in Alberta, B.C., Nunavut and the U.S.,” Wesstrom says. “We are also the Canadian distributor for the NATO-approved Camoplast Hagglunds tracks that are made in Finland.”

With 18 hotels across Nunavut, Inns North is perhaps best positioned to take the temperature of the territory’s tourism and hospitality industry, which brings in 13,000 people and $26-million in revenue. Beyond managing and constructing hotels, the company’s Arctic Co-op arm runs stores and acts as an intermediary between visiting businesspeople and tourists and the outfitters and guides who want to show them what the nation’s newest territory has to offer.

“I’d say there has been a drop in tourism,” says Ann Wheddon, manager of communications with Arctic Co-op. “But there is so much mining exploration going on and construction going on it has offset the tourism industry. In most of our hotels, we’ve either maintained sales, or [in some communities] definitely increased sales.”

The increases are mostly in markets like Pangnirtung and Rankin Inlet, where new facilities have been built to take advantage of increased development. However, sour market conditions have the company looking closely at what companies want from the North. “We’re trying to be proactive,” Wheddon says, staying abreast of what exploration companies and visitors are doing in the North, and how they are dealing with the economy. And, as in the NWT, Inns North is hoping to cultivate its own backyard to make up the difference.

"We’re encouraging the community to come in more,” Wheddon says. “Sometimes we have small lunch areas and small restaurants, so we’re trying to offer more service in that area.” This includes expanding menus and making sure they are available in both English and Inuktitut.

Nunavut has also taken a localized approach to tourism. In 2008, the government began to engage in SuperHost training for community members. Developed by Tourism B.C., SuperHost is a one-day workshop that teaches the basics of customer service, emphasizing professionalism and communication skills.

According to the Tourism B.C. website, the first Nunavut SuperHost trainers were certified in Vancouver in early 2008. They went on to train people in Rankin Inlet, Cambridge Bay, Kugluktuk and Gjoa Haven – all to get community members thinking about what their communities have to offer visitors.

A big part of any hospitality industry is food and, at least in Whitehorse, feeding hungry bellies seems to be a stable industry.

G & P Steak House and Pizza has been an institution in the Yukon capital for nearly a quarter-century, almost as long as owner Babette Lavallee Schmidt has been in the business. “Thirty-five years and 11 restaurants in Whitehorse and Dawson [City],” she says with a laugh. “I started at 17 and I’m still going.”

But time and experience are no excuse to rest on your laurels, she says. Lavallee Schmidt and her husband Warren spent $55,000 on the Mediterranean fine dining restaurant in February. Babette says she had a dream: “A starlight ceiling, a baby grand piano, and crystal chandeliers.” And she says the renos are getting great feedback from their clientele – a steady mix of regular locals and tourists.

In 35 years, Babette says she and her husband have seen it all – ups, downs, successes and failures. That’s why she refuses to panic in the face of noisy headlines about unprecedented financial ruin. “If you just listen to the media, you’ll drive yourself crazy,” she says.

She says staying above water in tough times is simple: It takes good food, a pleasant atmosphere and great service. Oh, and a lot of hard work. “What you put out,” she says, “you get back.”