Travel Trends with Dan Christian
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Travel Trends with Dan Christian
Event Spotlight: Les Grands Remous in Quebec City
This Special Event Spotlight features exclusive coverage from the inaugural Les Grands Remous Conference in Québec City—a groundbreaking gathering focused on innovation and sustainability in tourism brought together by MT Labs and Destination Quebec.
What to Expect:
- Expert Insights: Hear from influential speakers like Martin Lessard, Managing Director of MT Lab, and Robert Mercure, CEO of Destination Québec City, as they discuss the future of sustainable travel and cutting-edge technology and tourism initiatives.
- Visionary Entrepreneurs: Learn how trailblazers like JP Descheneau use AI to reinvent businesses, or explore the creative impact of Olivier’s eco-friendly electric camper vans.
- A Celebration of Québec: Discover why Québec City is a must-visit destination, with breathtaking winter scenes, Carnaval festivities, ice sculptures, and more.
Dan also speaks with keynote speaker from New Zealand, Mat Woods, the Chief Executive from Queenstown Tourism who share many valuable insights on sustainability along with Genvieve, a Quebec based sustainability advocate as well as Simon Jacobs from Immersion Québec who collectively paint a vivid picture of the ideas shaping our industry.
This special Event Spotlight really captures the magic of this inspiring inaugural event. We hope you enjoy these conversations and get to join us next year!
Season 5 Launched Jan 15th. New Episodes Every Weds! Check out our first 4 Seasons.
https://www.traveltrendspodcast.com/
In AI, you have to lose time before you gain time, right, so you have to learn it before you start gaining time. And yesterday we gave a presentation In 40 minutes. We were able to. We didn't have any business ideas and in 40 minutes we built an attraction, we built a business plan, we had images, a logo, a website, even a song, even a jingle for that business. So that's the smart when you see what it can do in so little time. What used to take a week to fill out the grant application is now taking half a day. That's when you see the gain in productivity.
Speaker 3:Hello everyone and welcome to a special event spotlight featuring Quebec City. I had the privilege to attend a conference called Les Grands Rumeaux, which stands for Troubled Waters, and it was a conference that was brought together by MT Lab from Montreal and Destination Quebec, and it's their first of what will be an annual series of events focused around sustainability and innovation, and I had the privilege to be one of three English language keynote speakers to be brought in for the event. Now I went in January of 2025, which is a beautiful month to go to Quebec City. It's just before the Carnival, which is the big celebration of winter in Quebec, so there is ice sculptures and all sorts of amazing outdoor activities which we got to take in, some outdoor skating and hot chocolates, and it was a really special event full of truly wonderful people that have come together to celebrate our industry and that are very focused on sustainability and making sure that our world will be preserved for future generations, and I had the privilege to listen to many speakers myself, and then I had the opportunity, on day two, to interview several very fascinating people that you're going to get a chance to hear from now. There's eight speakers in total. We're going to kick off with Martin Lessard, who is the managing director of MT Lab, which is Montreal Lab, and I got to experience the Montreal love of their entire team, who are truly extraordinary, and it was such a privilege to be amongst you for that few days just to feel the energy and excitement, especially around all the startups that are part of your ecosystem. So we're going to start off with Martin and then we're going to speak to Robert McHugh, who is the head of Destination Quebec. He is the CEO and he gave us a great overview of what makes Quebec City such a special destination. Then we're going to speak to one of the other outstanding keynotes, Matt Woods, who came all the way from New Zealand for this special event and he's the chief executive of Queenstown Tourism. And then we're going to bring it back to Quebec and speak to JP Deschanaux, who is an AI enthusiast and a remarkable entrepreneur. He's actually a former lawyer and you have to listen to his story. It's really fascinating. And then we speak to Jean Vievre, who is completely focused on all things sustainability in Quebec, followed by Olivier, who runs a really cool electric camper van company in Bromont. And then we speak to Simon Jacobs, who is a tour guide and also runs Immersion Quebec. And then we finish it off by going back to one of the colleagues at MT Lab, Florence Barbeau, who heads up all of their partnerships. I just wanted to say thank you so much to the entire team at MT Lab and ULISM Nina, Martin, Stefan and especially Frederick, who kindly picked me up at the airport and ensured I got an amazing tour of Quebec City to kick things off. So thank you so much for the opportunity to be there and I look forward to everyone enjoying these stories. We'll be right back.
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Speaker 3:And now back to the show. Hello everyone, and welcome to a special live recording here in Quebec City. We've had the most extraordinary couple of days. I now have the pleasure of sitting down to record with the Managing Director of MT Lab and the person that was responsible for bringing this whole event together. Martin Lessard Welcome, Martin. Bonjour. Good morning. Great to have you with us, Hi. Thank you very much. Now, tell everyone what MT Lab is first. I think that's probably a great place to start.
Speaker 4:Yeah, mt Lab is an incubator, accelerator, dedicated to tourism, culture and entertainment. We are based in Montreal, but we have some office in Quebec City and maybe in other regions of the Quebec province. The idea is to provide, or to be a bridge between, two ecosystems the innovative ecosystem, the entrepreneurs and the actors of the tourism industry. The idea is how to make them work together to make sure that they have the best fit to the market.
Speaker 3:It's a fascinating story, I think, for our international listeners. Mtl is the short form for Montreal. It's a clever name, so MT Lab. I've also come to experience a lot of MT love here in the last couple of days. Your team has been incredible. It's been such an honor and a pleasure to be here, so thank you for bringing me in to speak and also for recording these conversations, martin. Now MT Lab organized this event. Now tell everyone what the name of the event is and what it translates to in English.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the name in French is Les Grands Remous, which might be translated in troubled waters. The idea is like in tourism and I guess in any kind of other industry, we are like at the cross roads and that is very scary for everybody. So we just say to the industry maybe we should have a place where we can talk about that, have people from other industries to talk about what is innovation, what is sustainable and what we can do with that. So the idea is to bring all this industry to one place and once a year to think about those troubled waters ahead of us.
Speaker 3:So obviously you're based in Montreal. You're hosting this event in Quebec City for the very first time. I know your plans to be here for at least two years, maybe three years. Innovation, sustainability two of the big themes. Tell us who's come together. I mean, there's 400 people here and I think many of our listeners can hear some of the people around us and hear that Quebec cois French, which is so lovely to hear and obviously the people are so wonderful. But tell everyone who is here for this event.
Speaker 4:The idea is to bring all those DMO, those destination marketing office who wants to understand what's coming on, and to be able to bring all their art actors and tourism actors in their region to think about the next step. But mainly it's mainly those DMO, but also actors from the hotel sector, it might be also from the transportation. The idea is to bring people from all different sections of the tourism industry.
Speaker 3:That's amazing, the people that came to speak at the event. Obviously I had the honor and the pleasure to close yesterday's session, but I sat through all the sessions yesterday and they were so inspiring. We had Matt from New Zealand, who runs Tourism Queenstown, and Richie, professor K, exactly from NYU. But tell us the types of people you brought together for this conference.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly, you know the types of people you brought together for this conference. Yeah, exactly, you know the tourism industry are very well knit together because we all speak French. So we are all together and we are like in a sea of English-speaking people. So in a way we are very close together. And one problem is like when we are too much together, it's very hard to listen, to understand what's going on outside this little bubble. It doesn't mean that it's bad to be in that bubble, but sometimes when you have those weak signals from outside people talking about different ways of doing tourism, like in New Zealand, or maybe like what is hospitality, how Dr Key teaches hospitality in New York that is very good because we are in the same industry but we do it differently.
Speaker 3:For sure, and the other sessions. There was an amazing speaker in the morning. Tell everyone the background, because he is a strong environmentalist. He spent a lot of time in the polls and I know that presentation really struck people. And he spent a lot of time in the polls and I know that presentation really struck people and I watched a few of the videos so I had some understanding. But obviously tell us a little bit more about him in particular, because he was one of the star attractions of being here yeah, it was jean lemire.
Speaker 4:He's a biologist who buy about a boat, like maybe some 20 to 30 years ago, and went across across the world, mainly in Antarctic and Arctic seas, to see what's going on. It was his passion. Maybe we can for people who know the Commander Cousteau he's kind of our Commander.
Speaker 1:Cousteau in.
Speaker 4:Quebec and he went to the north in North Canada and like maybe, let's say, 15 years ago when he struggled to cross the channel through the ice from the east to the west side of the Arctic. But 10 years after that he went back again and there were no ice at the same time of the year. So he came back very stressed about what's going on a now. From now on he was he want to talk about that to everybody. Being someone from our own community that's worked a lot more than some some scientific or a scientist around the world. But because he's talking about our own world, our own country, that is very scary for us.
Speaker 3:For sure. I mean it was very sobering and I could see the reaction of the audience as he was showing the videos and just highlighting how precarious the situation is with climate change and how the world is being negatively impacted, and I think that's what clearly we all need to be very conscientious of as we promote tourism in a responsible and sustainable way, whatever the terminology that's most appropriate. We want to make sure that we leave the world for future generations to be able to enjoy, as we've had the privilege to, and I think that's what stood out, not only with his but obviously Matt from Queenstown and the remarkable innovation that they have undertaken things like electric jet boats. It's remarkable, and so I think hopefully it has inspired a lot of people here to see the examples of these great speakers you've brought together. But in addition to the speakers and the incredible delegation that I've had a real privilege to get to know, the other thing that stood out to me is all these startups and MT Lab.
Speaker 3:Obviously, you've been running this for nearly a a decade now and you've got such a impressive background with working with startups to help them scale. Interestingly for our listeners, stay 22 was actually one of the first Andrew Lockhead, who's been on this podcast. He was actually one of the first cohort eight years ago when you guys started, and it's a remarkable Quebec success story. So credit to you for establishing this, because you came in to organize MT Lab, get this off the ground and to help startups like him. There's many other startups that are here at this event. Tell us a little bit more about the ones that you've chosen to bring to the event here today, because on this podcast, of course, many of our listeners are going to hear from them as well.
Speaker 4:Yeah, let's talk about Hopin. Hopin World is kind of something from the left field. It's a metaverse where you can see a destination through your Google. For the tourism industry that's very hard to understand how something which is not the real destination can help the destination. And he succeeded to just find the right way to say for the tourist journey, you need a time where you have to think about where you want to go, but before that you have maybe to see, maybe people who are going to change your point of view on where you want to go. In the world, with open world, you can put your google and you're gonna talk with other people at the destination so it can present you the destination without going there, but it's give you the sense that maybe that's the place where you want to go, but without moving.
Speaker 4:The idea again is how to bring something that seems not to fit in the tourism industry. We have somebody escaping. Escaping is like putting a high-definition camera on the top of a mountain so you're able to see if there's some snow on the mountain before going there. So sometimes it's not really like something. You think first about what you need for a ski station, but all those startups bring some small solutions which are quite great to change the point of view of the tourist, for sure.
Speaker 3:And the other one that stood out to me is the Dig it guys that do the trails. Tell everyone a little bit about their business, because that's one that stood out to me. That of this is, uh, incubated in quebec. Not only do you have the culture, you've also got the landscape and you've got people that are solving really important problems that many of the people wouldn't have realized and created a successful business, as I was so impressed meeting them yesterday. Obviously, yes, they're part of your new cohort, um, and essentially their business model is focused on working with trails, even ski hills, where you can have an app. When you have your trails open, you have the option to be able to have it on your app, on your website and actually on the trail to indicate whether it's open, closed or under construction, and it's again a novel problem that a lot of companies face, and so this is where you, being the director general of mt lab, and seeing these businesses come in that are addressing pain points and determine who else you bring in.
Speaker 3:The other one that stood out to me is my smart journey. Yeah, my smart journey. Tell us a bit about that yeah, it's this one.
Speaker 4:it's like it's bringing qr codes, uh to to help employees of a, of a destination, of a an attraction, like to not depend on the IT to do kind of a small journey through the destination. Let's say you want to put some QR code and then you want to attach some multimedia information, a picture, a video. It's very easy to update your information to one point. The idea is you can change it very on the fly and not depending on your IT guy or IT girl who have to change the website. And the idea is not bringing the QR code, it's bringing the server behind the QR code. That is very easy for the employee, the server behind the QR code that is very easy for the employee. And that employee is able to present that to the boss after that and say here's what we should do next.
Speaker 4:And if we want to go to something more bigger, then we can go somewhere else. But we have to start somewhere, and MySmartJourney is the place to start.
Speaker 3:Fascinating. I saw the way they organize scavenger hunts. There's so many different applications for their technology and Panorama was another interesting one. I think they want to get into MT Lab. They're based here. They have this software for boards to be able to operate together and it was a new business I wasn't familiar with and I love when you come across these startups.
Speaker 4:Yeah, panorama is a good example of something that you don't think fits in the tourism industry, because when you say this is a startup in tourism, you're going to think about hotel or maybe a restaurant or something for the restaurant. But it's a business, you know, and a business sometimes needs sometimes some administration software, sometimes needs some administration software and Panorama helps the nonprofit organization to deal with the administrator in a simple way. But that is. Maybe there are a lot of tourism actors or nonprofit organizations and they might profit from this solution.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's so interesting and that's why I love when you've connected the startup ecosystem with the established players, like the DMOs, because they're clearly looking to leverage new technology and they're learning from each other, and I've seen that here over the last couple of days. The other thing I was also keen to ask you is the trends that you're seeing in Quebec tourism, whether it be at MT Labs, specifically, or even the discussions you've been having here. What, as we sit here in 2025 and look at how this year and the future is going to play out for Quebec tourism, what are some of the trends, whether it be technology or tourism, that you're paying attention to, martin?
Speaker 4:It's mainly everything about HR. We have a startup in Montreal who is dealing with migrant people, because those migrant people come to the country and they don't really know what is the tourism industry. So we need some people who know migrants and they think like them. So they have to be migrants themselves and they are able to be the middlemen to bring them to the tourism industry, and they are able to be the middleman to bring them to the tourism industry. So the idea sometimes is not having a solution that is high tech or even low tech. Sometimes it's no tech, it's just a way like it's a people industry. So you need those new startups who think differently and say I'm going to bring you your next employee and they're going to come with their culture and they're going to help them or help you to understand their culture.
Speaker 3:Well, that's very cool. That's an interesting answer, because almost everyone I speak to, the first thing they're going to say is AI. Of course, it's just like and so I'm actually. I find that refreshing. Clearly, ai is a big important thing.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3:But HR and just how you actually and I guess that's an example of a company like Panorama that helps with boards, because a lot of these companies here have boards and they have board reports, but you know.
Speaker 4:AI is for me. I mean it's something that AI is going to be like a tool. It's like telling, like 20 or 30 years ago now, having Google. So Google, I mean, do you, are you an expert in the server of a search engine? No, you're just using Google or maybe Yahoo at the time. So the AI is the same thing today and it's changed every month, every week, almost every day now. So for me it's not the next big thing, because it has to settle down first and then we're going to see this is the next thing to do. But right now we are just struggling to just understand what we're going to do. And even if we use the tool, I mean it's going to change. And right now I mean I don't think people really understand what's going to change, but it's maybe too early to say it.
Speaker 3:That's really interesting. Again, I appreciate your perspective on this. The other thing I wanted to ask you, given that we are coming to the end of the event, is what you're hoping people are going to take away from the time they've had here and how you're going to factor that in to coming back next year.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's the idea, like we're mainly about innovation. The idea is, like you know, innovation is not the end point. Innovation. The idea is, like you know, innovation is not the end point. Innovation is just a way to go somewhere and the tourism industry doesn't have a lot of time, not of money. So it's the idea to have this posture I don't know if there is a right posture to understand when you know this is an opportunity to take. If you're not in this position to understand what's going on, you're not able to understand what you can do next if something happens.
Speaker 4:When the pandemic struck our industry, I mean I am in tourism, culture and entertainment industry. So I mean the next day people just look at me and say, hi, you're dead, you know. But you know I am in the innovation sector. So I just say to my partners now let's go for the new experience, let's go for no-contacts technology. And the idea is like innovation is always there. So my partners knew those kind of weird startup with no contact, the multi-sensorial experience. So we just bring this new innovation and say you know, you know them since the last two, three years. Now you're ready to take the opportunity, even if it's the pandemic.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's really interesting and I know you're going to have to get back into the session shortly. I can see your team and the sound that people can hear in the background. It sounds like a ship's about to leave. It's actually we're at the port of Quebec and it's an amazing venue space and that's the sound to say get back into the session. So I just had one last question for you is when, with MT Lab, your plans for this year?
Speaker 3:I know you've got a demo day coming up in June that I hope to come up to Montreal to join you for that and meet some of the startups, and so, but tell us what you have planned this year for MTLAB and then how people can find out more about MTLAB and follow up with you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, if you want more information, it's mtlabca. It's in French right now, so you're going to practice your French if you want to. I hope to have an English section pretty soon. But we are doing the demo day. Demo day is like, even if we are in the industry of incubator accelerator world this demo day is mainly not about pitches. It's about like slow dating.
Speaker 4:We are putting those startups in a room and our partners just take time 30 minutes to talk to them about their experience, not about their solution. So that's what is our demo day. But also we ask our partner to say you're going to do a reverse solution. So that's what is our demand. But also we ask our partner to say you're going to do a reverse pitch. So maybe in spring or maybe in September, we're going to have those reverse pitch from our partner. We're going to tell what kind of problems they want to solve in the next year. So they are the ones who are telling the industry this is where we want to see the next innovation. So they are the ones who are telling the industry this is where we want to see the next innovation. So having those partners telling us as the leader, telling us what they are looking for. That is the best way to help entrepreneurs to have the best fit to market with their solution.
Speaker 3:That's exciting. That's terrific. I'm sure people will use Google Translate, as I did, but it'll be terrific to have the English version as well because, it's such a compelling story here to be able to share with the world. So thank you, Martin again. Thank you for joining us, Thank you for bringing me here and also congratulations on a very successful first Empty Lab event.
Speaker 4:Thank you very much, Dan, and see you in Montreal. Look forward to it.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much. We'll be right back and see you in Montreal. Look forward to it. Thanks so much, we'll be right back. Hey, travel publishers and content creators, if you're searching for a fresh way to boost your revenue, then look no further than our friends at Stay22. Their AI-powered solutions work seamlessly in the background, adding an extra stream of revenue without altering any of your site's setup. In 2024 alone, their tools have powered more than 2 billion pages and helped their partners generate more than $500 million in GMV. It's time for you to join successful partner programs like Matador Network and Weatherbug and elevate your earnings. Today, just go to stay22.com slash traveltrends and you'll get details on an exclusive offer just for Travel Trends listeners. That's stay22.com, slash travel trends.
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Speaker 3:Are you looking for ways to grow your travel business through paid media and optimized SEO? Then you have to check out our friends at Propelliccom. They are the leading digital agency for growth in travel and tourism. Propellic offers bold digital marketing strategies to ensure your travel company's success. They have a remarkable methodology that has actually been implemented by TravelAIcom, and they are a leading SEO agency globally and offer a range of resources a podcast of their own, a blog on their website, propelliccom. That's P-R-O-P-E-L-L-I-Ccom. And don't forget to mention Travel Trends for your free marketing audit. Now back to the show. Welcome back to a live recording here at Les Grands Rumeaux, which is the troubled waters, as you heard there from Martin. I now have the privilege to sit down and speak with the CEO of Destination Quebec City, robert Mercure, who is joining us for a brief chat to tell us a little bit more about this amazing city that we've hosted this event in. So bonjour, welcome, robert, great to have you with us.
Speaker 2:Thank you, dan, great being with you.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. My wife is from Montreal. I love coming back to this province and I wanted to ask you a bit more about your background. Let's start with that, because you were originally from Montreal, but you've been here for nearly 20 years in Quebec City. Tell us a little bit about your story and how you actually got into tourism.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm actually a hotelier. I'm a fourth-generation hotelier. So I've traveled the world, brought up in a hotel business, with my family originally from Quebec and the province of Quebec, closer to Montreal, and traveled the world. I've lived in 20 different destinations, spent a lot of time in the US, europe, western Canada etc. So exposed early on. Also ran the was CEO at the Convention Center in Montreal, so very exposed to the convention business.
Speaker 2:I ran the Chateau Frontenac. I was general manager at the Chateau Frontenac here in Quebec City for 11 years. Incredible Chateau Frontenac here in Quebec City for 11 years.
Speaker 3:Incredible the Chateau Frontenac, part of the Fairmont properties. I just want to make sure all of our listeners actually know the significance of what you just mentioned, because these hotels were built across Canada during a very, I guess, a special time in our history where we're trying to encourage more people to come to Canada and take trains across the country and stay in these remarkable hotels and the Chateau Frontenac, which everyone listening to this has to look up if you're not familiar with it, because it is the most beautiful hotel in Canada.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's iconic. It's our Statue of Liberty, if you will, and so it's one of the most photographed hotels in the world, and the whole Fairmont Heritage Hotels in Canada were built by Canadian Pacific and CN as well, canadian National as a whole network of hotels tying together the railway system. In fact, canadian Pacific was the first international travel empire that could circle the globe Is that right? Yeah, by boat and train.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's fascinating the part I became familiar with because working in the travel industry for so many years and travel agents often get discounts and Fairmont had these great programs Fairmont Famous Program and I had the opportunity to go and stay at the Fairmont in San Francisco. So CP, as you would know being an executive there bought the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and rebranded their hotel chain Fairmont's a great name, it's a luxurious name but I still love the allure of CP hotels. Canadian.
Speaker 3:Pacific really strong Canadian identity. So how did you transition from the hotel world into being in the destination management?
Speaker 2:Well, I was offered that position here in Quebec City. I fell in love with Quebec City. My kids pretty much became adults here, so there was always the emotional and professional and family connection. Quebec City is really a very unique destination for all kinds of reasons that you're seeing. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's always, I felt, had an amazing potential to go even further. It's always done well, but we're really bringing it elsewhere in a great way and we want to do it in a sustainable way as well.
Speaker 3:Well, tell the world a little bit about Quebec City. I had the privilege I mean, I've been here a few times in my life. I came here in high school for an incredible kind of history tour with my high school class, so I still have fond memories of that. But when I arrived, one of the startups actually organized an amazing walking tour of the old city for me, and then last night I went and had a night walk around town and took some incredible pictures of Chateauneuf-Frontenac. So I would love for our audience to hear from you just to share a little bit of history and context to Quebec City, a few parts of the history that maybe our global listeners may not be familiar with, because this is where Canada started in many ways.
Speaker 2:Actually, yes, and it started as New France right, so it was the capital of New France, with the original French settlers. It was established in 1608, and it's the only fortified walled city north of Mexico. So it's extremely unique in North America and in fact, one of the things that really attracted us in this sustainable approach is because often I say we have old world problems that Europe has seen for a few years in tourism development. We can think about Venice or Barcelona, et cetera, and other heritage cities and because of our unique design and being a walled city and a heritage city, et cetera, we want to protect that because we're in the new world but we have the most authentic European experience, certainly in North America, and so it's something we're proud of. You know, we protected our culture, our Francophone roots. People rave about the city. We've got a lot of demand and we want to manage it correctly.
Speaker 3:And you have one of your big festivals and events coming up shortly. Because this is a year-round destination, I think winter is one of the best times to visit Quebec, but tell everyone about the carnival that's coming up?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's the largest winter carnival in the world and it all started because winter was slow right in the old days and they all got together and said, ok, we've got to do something, and so it really is an amazing celebration of winter with an incredible variety of winter experiences. It's very magical.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and for you this year, what is the overall marketing theme, with promoting Quebec as a destination? Tell us a little bit about what you have planned for 2025, both for listeners that are interested to visit, but also partners that might be interested in working with you.
Speaker 2:Well, it's to come to discover Europe and North America, and it's a multi-layered experience.
Speaker 2:We have a variety of, whether it's museums or it's a very walkable city, and so the campaigns are focusing on discovering and rediscovering Quebec because in some ways it's also a best-kept secret but very accessible, particularly for people in the Northeast, the US, et cetera, and even the Canadians are rediscovering Quebec City.
Speaker 2:Everyone has heard of Quebec City, but if you haven't lived it, we're really pushing the element of the magic year-round okay, because we want to spread the wealth, so to speak. We do very well in the summer and in the fall, winter. We've always felt that we have really a product that is so exceptional, with a number of amazing ski resorts just minutes away and all the other winter activities, and so we're really pushing, uh discovering quebec year-round in and it's very unique flavor of varieties it's. It's it's kind of like three or four cities in one, because summer is very different from winter and so are the activities and access to the St Lawrence River and the mountains nearby. The combination of heritage, culture, nature and active mobility options to explore is very, very unique for Quebec City and for us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I think most people would be familiar with Montreal. Obviously, Montreal is a fantastic and it's a large city. Quebec is about three hours traveling by car, but rail is one of the best ways to get here.
Speaker 3:For sure, much more sustainable and a beautiful way to see it. So when people think about traveling to Quebec City, how much time? Clearly, there's a lot of time you can spend in the city, but what I would like to encourage our listeners is, if they're coming to Montreal, if they're in Montreal for work or for business, that they should stay for a weekend and come to Quebec City. So what would be your recommendations for people who want to find out more information about coming to Quebec City and planning that weekend getaway?
Speaker 2:Well, for sure, checking out our website would be a great start, and we've really pushed a lot of interactivity on our website and obviously we've integrated some amazing AI-type features, so it's a great user-friendly experience for customizing your experience. What really resonates with a lot of our people is that we really do speak French here and yet everyone is bilingual. We're known for our warm welcome and the variety of experiences and authentic cuisine. We've just become a designated Michelin star destination as well, so we're becoming more and more well-known for the whole gastronomy.
Speaker 2:If I'm saying it correctly, I'm translating from French, but so gastronomic experience as well as the cultural experience, because there are quite unique things. We are the birthplace of New France and Canada. A lot of people don't realize. So, depending on it, there's something for everyone and that's really the message we want to push. And, yes, a minimum a weekend, I like to say three, four days to really have the variety of going to nature, visiting some incredible lakes and areas, waterfalls at the Montmorency Falls, and it's the richness and the beauty of the region and the uniqueness and that with that sort of flavor of the bon vivant, the great sort of French-style life in North America and in Canada. It's really amazing People, you know, frankly, I interact a lot with tourists and they come back to me, they become ambassadors, word of mouth there's nothing better than word of mouth and it's really working. But I really really strongly encourage people to come and discover us if you haven't seen it.
Speaker 3:I love that you highlighted the language, because most travelers when they go to a destination, they do try to speak. But often if you go to France with all due respect to that destination when you start to speak French, often French people will speak English back to you because they'll recognize right away. But here in Quebec City and obviously Montreal has a lot of Anglophones as well so you can get by in english. But in quebec city people really appreciate if you actually try and you just see the smile and the delight and they'll continue to engage you and then switch over to english if needed. But it for any of them coming to quebec city. Definitely practice your french and plan to use it here. It will elevate your experience. It'll connect you better to the local.
Speaker 3:So, uh, robert, I think that was a great suggestion. I'm uh, you know it's a real honor to speak to you. You mentioned the website. Can you just let everyone know what the URL is? And then also if you want anyone to follow partners that might be listening to this, because we have a massive global B2B audience that might be interested in reaching out to you directly.
Speaker 2:Sure, well, it's destinationquebeccitycom. Okay, and so then it really pools together a number of variety of resources. So when you want to drill down deeper into other experiences, you can really get the full flavor of the destination. And in terms of contacting me, certainly through the website with my team is a great way to start and I'm always available for everybody who's interested in chatting further. And you know, we're very proud. I think we really have a lot to show and we'd love to continue, you know, encouraging people and enlightening people to what the potential and what the fun is. You know, the Chateau Frontenac is just one example. Often we see the Chateau Frontenac in our photos, right, because we do it, because people kind of understand okay, this is Quebec City, but it's just a small part of an amazing heritage and beauty and culture.
Speaker 3:That's fantastic, Well enchanté, Robert. Merci beaucoup, Thank you so much for joining us and I wish you every success this year and definitely everyone listening to this. Come and visit Robert in Quebec City and meet these wonderful people, this great culture and cuisine. And yeah, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Merci beaucoup, Dan.
Speaker 3:I now have the privilege to speak to one of the amazing keynote speakers that's traveled all the way from New Zealand to be here. His name is Matt Woods and he is the CEO of Destination Queenstown. Welcome, matt. Thanks so much for joining us on Travel Trends.
Speaker 6:Dan, it's so good to be here. It's super exciting to be in Canada and particularly to be here in Quebec. And look, I don't know if you've explained where we are, but we're sitting in the terminal building in Quebec Harbor and I'm watching ice going down the river. Lawrence River right now in front of me, and it is wild. It is minus 30 outside and ice is rolling down the river In both directions.
Speaker 8:we discovered last night, both directions, yeah.
Speaker 3:Apparently it's to do with the tide, but it is remarkable to see You're right and we've been walking across together in the mornings and it has woken us both up at the minus 30, but I'm a little bit more used to it. But you get minus 12 in New Zealand.
Speaker 6:Yeah, we get down to minus 12s, yeah, but not minus 30s, and usually, even on a winter's day, it warms up to like 10 degrees in the middle of the day. So to stay minus 30 all day, that's a little bit of a shock to the system. And, of course, right now it's summer in New Zealand.
Speaker 7:Yeah, exactly, we're at sort of plus 30, so the difference of being 60 degrees is crazy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no kidding. Well, tell everyone what brought you all the way across from New Zealand to be here at Le Grand Remus, which, for those people who've been already listening to this podcast, troubled waters the idea of sustainability and innovation. So tell us how you ended up coming to this conference and what your experience has been so far.
Speaker 6:Yeah, look, I'm pretty excited to be here, as you can tell, and, like MT, labs have done an amazing job of putting this together and they contacted me about coming along and particularly around talking about sustainability and equally around what the work we've been doing in our destination management plan in Queenstown, and particularly around carbon and so right there creates this incredible oxymoron. I've traveled halfway around the world to come to a conference to talk about sustainability and decarbonization and I struggle with that, and you know that was one of the toughest decisions for us when we were asked to come here. And you know I looked at this and go. I have used 6.7 tons of carbon to come here. And you know I looked at this and go. I have used 6.7 tons of carbon to come here. And we described yesterday in my presentation just what that really means when we talked about the volume of it. And I like to use the 40 foot shipping container example, and you know we think about carbon and weight, but it's not, it's this invisible gas that's really dangerous. You know, we all know that it's created by burning fossil fuels and if I think about that 6.7 tons that I used to get here, it's equivalent to 44 shipping containers of CO2, which is phenomenal, and so I can't defend why I came here to do that.
Speaker 6:But I did come to come and share the story and use the power of tourism for good, and I know that sounds a little bit cheesy, but if you think about tourism, there is 10% of the power of tourism for good, and I know that sounds a little bit cheesy, but if you think about tourism, there is 10% of the population of the world works in tourism 350 million people. Now. That's a lot of people. And if 350 million people can actually tell the story and influence the rest of the planet, we can actually do something for good here and make some changes. And so I really feel the power of tourism and particularly I talk about the transformative power. And you know, when you travel somewhere, you come somewhere with this open heart and open mind and I think about myself right here as I look across the river with the frozen ice. I'm learning something new right now. But when people come anywhere in the world to travel, they learn something new. So how do we use the power of tourism for transformative good?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, there's so much that New Zealand has to offer and teach the world. And just for a bit of context too, because I think what we'll make sure for our listeners is there's access to your presentation, because it was so inspiring and you could have gone on for an hour and I would have been captivated, and so would the audience have been, because you had so much to share and we've obviously gotten time together at dinner and throughout the event to get to know each other better and to talk about New Zealand, because I lived in Australia, as you know, for a while and traveled through New Zealand, and New Zealand is a country somewhat similar to Canada in the sense that it is well-known but largely misunderstood. You are from the South Island.
Speaker 3:Queenstown, as we were saying last night, is like the jewel in the crown of the South Island. The South Island is arguably the best part of New Zealand. I'm sure the North Islanders have other views on that, but any guidebook will tell you to spend the majority of your time in the South Island. It is stunning and beautiful. All of New Zealand is great, but the South Island is certainly where you want to spend most of your time and Queenstown is the capital of tourism, and therefore you have to be that much more conscientious of the environment and the impact that travelers are having. And you guys really have led the way. Why don't you share a couple of examples? The jet boat, for one, really blew my mind.
Speaker 6:Yeah, sure, and I think you touched on some really good points around Queenstown, I mean, and if we think about Queenstown specifically, tourism is the backbone of our economy, it's the number one game in town, and so if we make a change in tourism, it changes everything in our town. And if we sort of go back a notch before COVID, we had lost our social licence and I talk about social licence not being over tourism, but very much around our community pushing back saying, hey, it's too busy, there's too many visitors here. We don't see the benefit in this visitor economy. What's in it for us. So that's kind of the starting point, and then we look at how do we use tourism for good in Queenstown and how do we make those differences. But you've alluded to some great examples there, and so I'm just going to come back to the jet boat, because you did ask that question and, in particular, what we've managed to do in our destination management plan is come up with this incredibly ambitious goal of being a carbon zero visitor economy by 2030. And so how do you do that? And so you need to rapidly decarbonize all of these activities, and the jet boats are good examples.
Speaker 6:So we have an operator called Shot Over Jet. They have internal combustion jet boats, they're using V8 engines and they have developed the world's first electric jet boat. And so why have they done that? And so Shot Over Jet is owned by Ngai Tahu Tourism. Ngai Tahu is the Maori people of the South Island, it's the iwi or the tribe, and they decided that it's not right to be burning all this carbon up and down the canyon riffing through the jet boats. And so they decided they would create the world's first electric jet boat, because there wasn't one. And so they did that for for future, future generations, because it's the right thing to do, but there's also a massive economic advantage to that. So by using tourism as the shop front, we can now export electric jet boats to the world. So we have a tourism activity that's decarbonized, but we've also diversified our economy from just being tourism to actually being able to develop and export electric jet boats yeah, it's just incredible, and I think this is where you know, having traveled to new ze and Queenstown specifically.
Speaker 3:People are drawn to New Zealand for many reasons, lord of the Rings being one of them, of course, but also the adventure, the outdoors, the adrenaline, and I think that it stood out to me.
Speaker 3:I was telling Matt that I hiked the Milford Track and Milford Sound is a well-known, beautiful destination in new zealand and I couldn't believe that I could drink the water out of the stream and that it's actually it's more pure than the water you get in a bottle and it really blew my mind that actually the world was like this at one time, because I think we've just become so used to lakes and rivers being polluted and having to find other sources for for drinking water and but that's not the case in new zealand and people are coming to new zealand to experience the outdoors. And you've made this commitment and obviously this, this, this pledge, and you have your pillars that you need to make sure that the environment is going to be preserved for your children, for your grandchildren. You also talked yesterday about you know the uh being looking back at your ancestors. Tell everyone that, because that again, that really struck me as well uh, yeah, I mean, I think specifically about um.
Speaker 6:I was using my own example and I roll the clock forward to the year 2100. I am long gone. I'm currently 50 years old, so I'm not going to make it to then. My daughter would be potentially 95 years old. She might have children. She might not have children, but if she does, they might even have children. So in theory, I'm great, great granddad and I think about what I know now and the decisions that I make, and what would those great-great-grandchildren say about myself? And so when I'm left and going, hey, granddad knew about actually burning fossil fuels causes climate change and he did nothing about it. I don't think I could live with that. So I think about what does it mean to be a good ancestor and thinking about potentially a year 2100, and what would those great-grandchildren say about the decisions that I made, knowing what I currently know?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the other thing that stood out to me both by your background and presentation yesterday that I wanted to highlight with our audience when I got to know Matt over lunch on the very first day he has such an impressive entrepreneurial background. He actually built up a collection. He's an avid skier, he's an outdoorsman himself and he built up a collection. He's an avid skier, he's an outdoorsman himself and he built up a collection of more than a dozen retail stores and sold them to a much larger player and did very well. And he could have retired over 10 years ago, but he decided that he wanted to continue to work in travel and tourism.
Speaker 3:And so what stands out to me there is obviously you have a strong business acumen. You're truly passionate about this because it's coming from a really honest place and I guess that's where not everyone who enters into destination tourism has that background, because when you're working in government sector, a lot of people are more familiar with government and there's great benefit to both private and public sector. But once you've had that private sector experience, you can really bring that additional business perspective to the public sector. And the examples you were sharing both with the ski hill of getting rid of cups and getting people to stop drinking water. If I can share this, you guys gave up $250,000 in revenue in bottled water to be able to offer people the opportunity to actually fill their water bottles, but you sold those water bottles and made more than $350,000. They're recyclable.
Speaker 6:Totally. And look, I think this is a really interesting point. And so when we talk environmental initiatives, often people go oh it costs me more, I don't want to spend more, people aren't going to pay more, and I think we need to really demyth that because that's not necessarily true. Often going green can be cheaper and there is real cost benefits. And so I like to really start with the economic benefits. And if I think about the water bottle story is a really good story. So you're right, at the ski mountain we did give up $4 million worth of revenue, but we managed to actually lift our yield per person and we made an extra $350,000 by giving away free water. So that was kind of a weird story to be able to give away some revenue but actually make more money because we were able to lift the yield by giving away something free.
Speaker 6:But you know, if I think about the economic benefits and particularly around decarbonisation, the fastest way we can decarbonise is through electrification, and if we think about electrification and the cost of fossil fuels, it is much cheaper to run an electric machine, and so not just because the cost of fossil fuels, it is much cheaper to run an electric machine, and so not just because the cost of the electricity is cheaper than fuel, but also because of maintenance, and if you think about the maintenance that you have on a vehicle, so whether that's a bus or a car or some other vehicle, it is costing you a lot less in actually maintenance.
Speaker 6:And of course, the greatest thing too is you plug this thing in at night and in the morning it's fully charged, it's like your cell phone, so like you're not even wasting time going to the garage and having to fill it up with gas you know so there is massive economic advantage and I think if we talk about those economic benefits first and foremost, then we often talk about the performance of, you know, electrification on machines, and then, of course, it's really good for the planet.
Speaker 6:And so I think you've got to flip the story. And if you think about what destinations do, or destination marketing offices, we're storytellers and so it's what's the story that we want to tell? And can we tell a story that can actually show A economic benefits and it's good for the planet?
Speaker 3:Yeah, matt, tell everyone how they can find out more about Queenstown, destination Queenstown, or connect with yourself to partner with you in future opportunities.
Speaker 6:Yeah, totally. Hey, dan, it's been really good talking to you. And look for anyone who is interested in Queenstown, just check out our website. It's wwwqueenstownnznz. I know that probably sounds confusing. That's nznz. So yeah, queenstown, nznz. And look, there's a lot of information there around all of the wonderful things that you can do. And, of course, you'll find us on social media and you'll get all the other stories there, so come and enjoy.
Speaker 3:You're going to continue to inspire me. I'm going to follow your journey and I look forward to keeping in touch with you, Matt.
Speaker 8:Thank you.
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Speaker 3:And now back to the show. Know, and he is a remarkable individual. I need to give a bit of context to this guy because, as more and more people said, you need to speak to him. You need to speak to him. I understood why. He's grown up in montreal, he did law school in ottawa, he worked at the hay in the netherlands. He has a remarkable career, but then he decided to come back to montreal, bought a tourism business. He's grown it to now have more than 350 employees and he is a passionate advocate for AI and runs leads, I should say, an AI working group here in Quebec. So, jp, it's a real pleasure to speak to you.
Speaker 1:Nice to be here as well. I'm really glad to be here.
Speaker 3:Awesome. So tell everybody let's start with the AI. So tell us about this working group, because you blew my mind yesterday for about 20 minutes at the end of the day, with some of the tools that you've been working on and, as you highlighted to me, you don't have a technical background. Clearly you're a very smart and clever guy, but you are just teaching yourself. You're watching YouTube videos. So tell us a little bit about what you're doing with AI.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. So basically, I own businesses in Montreal with attractions, so we own an adventure park with aerial courses. We own, in total, six different businesses, 14 locations and, as you said, about 350 employees. So it all started with a need. I mean that's the best way to start. I mean we needed to file some grants documents and we were short on time, so we decided to use AI to help us, and that was what started everything and started a working group here in quebec, and now we're doing a tour of quebec where we try to teach all kinds of businesses around the province of how to use ai in their own businesses and organizations yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 3:well, let's talk about your businesses too, because so, um, you own these pirate ships, so tell us the sequence events. So what was the first business you acquired, which is the pirate ships with the aerial courses?
Speaker 1:And we grew from there. I mean, after that, we acquired three other companies, we launched new businesses, one at the Olympic Stadiums. Now we also operate the ice skate rental at the ice skating rinks in the old port of Montreal, quartier des Spectacles, parc La Fontaine, and we rental at the ice skating rinks in the old Port of Montreal, quartier des Spectacles, parc La Fontaine, and we have six other ice skating rinks, and so that's how it grew.
Speaker 3:So from there, that's where we are now, and in this journey with AI has it been over the last year, 18 months? This is exactly what you just started to highlight to our audience, too, and what stood out to me is that you are identifying pain points like customer service and 800 hours that it was taking one of your team members. How could you reduce that down to 200 by virtue of doing this automation? So you were using it to problem solve. So when did you start to embrace it? Was it really from the early days of ChatGPT in the last two years?
Speaker 1:It was earlier than that. I was using Jasper AI back then, so it was before ChatGPT came out and we started really for the writing process, and it wasn't as good as it is right now, obviously. And then, as you said, I mean we sat down everybody when ChatGPT came out and decided to look at our processes what was taking time, what was repetitive, what was really hard on our team and that's as you said, we identified the customer service part, because it was taking so much time every day and it was repetitive. I mean, 80% of the questions that we get are always in five different topics. So how can we automate that process? And so we started looking at different solutions. And then we were using makecom right now with ChatGPT, to automate the whole process.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're showing me some really clever tools and techniques, and I guess this is where I mean. You know, from my presentation yesterday, ai was part of my talk and I was essentially just trying to empower people to embrace this technology and not fear it, and unfortunately, there is still a fairly large segment it's the minority. The majority of people realize this is a big opportunity. But for those people out there that are sitting on the fence that are hesitant, tell everyone how you started to embrace it and teach yourself, because I think that's what was really empowering of hearing your story and your journey. So for those people because this is where, like, you're not technical but you're well-educated, you're running a business and I'm sure other people will look and say, well, I just don't have the time to investigate and understand AI and you clearly are very intellectually curious.
Speaker 1:So how would you spark other people to follow you by example? Well, in AI, you have to lose time before you gain time right. So you have to learn it before you start gaining time. And yesterday we gave a presentation and in 40 minutes we were able to. We didn't have any business ideas and in 40 minutes we built an attraction, we built a business plan, we had images, a logo, a website, even a song, even a jingle for that business. So that's the spark when you see what it can do in so little time. What used to take a week to fill out grant application is now taking half a day. That's when you see the gain, the productivity gain. And we're not trying to cut people's jobs. I mean when we're gaining some time, we just want people to go where they have more value. I mean, and that's what happened with the email automation, I mean we went from 800 hours to about 200 hours, but the 600 hours that we're gaining, that person is working on something that is more productive, that is generating more revenue, for example.
Speaker 3:So you highlighted the operational efficiency, which is certainly an amazing way to start utilizing AI. That session you just referenced you did yesterday. I was seeing people coming up to you afterwards and that jingle you referenced it was like a Quebec rap song and people were amazing. You literally built a business in 30 minutes. You came up with a concept and, as you said, built a logo, website, marketing initiative. It was like you did wireframes, and that's what really blew my mind as you were walking me through it. It's just like you just spun up a business in 30 minutes that would have taken months, if not years, previously. So that, I think, was clearly very inspiring to everyone that attended your session and people were buzzing coming out of it, and so that's why I wanted not only to have you on this podcast, but also to hear you share that to inspire our listeners. Now, how else are you looking to leverage AI, whether before your business or as you're doing that? I'm sure you're also having other ideas of other businesses you can enter.
Speaker 1:For sure. I mean we want to start a few other businesses and it's helping at different. I mean, for example, we have now a process to hire people. So in April and May we have to hire 250 employees over a short period of time. So we automated that process so that when people are applying now the AI and with Airtable, we're automating the whole process. So, as you said, you can really in all the different departments of your company. I mean you can, for example, with accounting, you can have you use tools that are going to enter the bills and invoices directly into your accounting system. So there are so many opportunities inside our own company that we can automate the processes. So that's what we're looking at next.
Speaker 3:That's exciting. And then, in terms of new ventures, I was sharing with JP TravelAIcom, who is a sponsor of our podcast, and John and the team. They're great friends of ours and they're an amazing example of a Canadian company that is being very innovative and leveraging AI to spin up new businesses and grow rapidly. So is there some areas where you are thinking now, not you have to give away your next big venture idea, because you can keep some of those in your back pocket. But even if it is, you know, expanding beyond the, let me ask you, along with that same question, how you're looking to expand your business empire? Yeah, well, we've been working for the your business Empire, because it really is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we've been working for the last two years on building an aquarium in Montreal, so it's kind of a big project. I mean it would be in the Royal Mount, the new shopping center in Montreal, and we've been working on that for a while and AI can help you. Developing a project I mean only the visuals and we're looking and expanding as well. So develop some of our attractions right now in other cities as well, so that's part of our plan. And acquiring other companies. I mean we know that a lot of baby boomers are going to want to retire at one point, so there are going to be a lot of opportunities in the tourism world. So I think that's a great opportunity to grow as well.
Speaker 3:And are you considering growing outside of Quebec? Yeah, yeah, when you started this conversation, I think you were thinking about going to Toronto. Toronto at one point.
Speaker 1:I mean that was the part. I mean we even filed a project in Ontario Place at one point, but it's still a goal. I mean we want to grow and to go to uh, and toronto is the next logical place. I mean it's the biggest city in canada and it's uh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's where I can certainly say being based there. We'd welcome your innovative spirit coming into toronto and especially around tourism, because when we went to montreal last summer, um, we did. We were doing the pedal bikes and the pirate ships and like and it's, it's a fantastic. So when I lit up, when you said that that these are your businesses, because it was actually a big highlight of our time in Montreal and I think that's where it's given so much to the tourism industry in Montreal Another reason to visit and a wonderful highlight while you're there. The other thing I wanted to ask you about too, as we stand here at Le Grand Rameau in this first conference with MT Labs you know that team very well. You're very well connected in this whole community. I'd love to know what brought you here. Obviously you were doing a workshop, but yeah, I guess what brought you here and what were some of your takeaways from this first conference?
Speaker 1:I mean collaboration is the word. I mean we're working with other people. It's great to learn what other businesses are doing. I mean just by being here and talking to people and people are attending the workshops and then but they share their own stories and you learn by seeing what the other leaders in the industry, what they're doing. I mean I was talking to the owner of the Super Aqua Club, which is a water slides and a water park here, and she was telling me of how she has a dashboard connected to AI that analyzes all of her data, and that's something that I haven't looked at yet. But just by connecting with people, collaborating and people are willing to share, and that's the beauty of the tourism industry. I mean people are not afraid to share with their competitors what they're doing because they want to help the community.
Speaker 3:And so, since you're so innovative and kind of the head of the curve on these trends, I'd also like to get your take on what you're seeing in 2025. Obviously, we've talked about AI, and feel free to reference that again in my question here, but I guess I'd just be genuinely keen to know, from your vantage point, your position in the industry. Being in Montreal and focusing on Quebec, where you see the trends for 2025. What are some of the signals you're paying attention to? You just mentioned all the baby boomers about to retire, and this is where these insightful conversations with well-informed people like you that are ambitious and that are tell us some of the things that you're paying attention to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're going to pay attention to what's going south of the border, for sure I mean just to see if we're going to have only for our marketing campaigns.
Speaker 1:For example, I mean, are we going to see a lot more of people in Quebec staying in Quebec because of what's happening down south? That's a possibility. Are we going to adjust our marketing budget based on that? Probably, so that's one of the things we're going to look at. Second, I mean obviously you mentioned it AI, but also all of the automations that we can do with the operator and things like that. How can we improve our businesses further and go further than we're already going right now? So those are two of the main points that we're looking at right now closely.
Speaker 3:Very cool. Yeah, this is great. I'm so glad we made the time, and I would also just love for you to share, going back to where our conversation started on AI, a couple of tips or suggestions I know you had highlighted to me about YouTube, but there was a specific individual that you called out, so if you wouldn't mind sharing a couple of suggestions for our listeners on how they should embrace AI and where they should go to learn more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. I mean there are a few steps. I think there are four steps for people to start using AI. I mean the first one. I think in any business you should have a clear plan. You should have a guideline of how to use AI in your organization. So what is allowed, what tools can you use? How are you going to use it? So, for example, we have a policy inside of our business where whenever AI writes something, there needs to be an individual behind it to approve the message before it is sent to the client. So I think to have that guideline really is the first step.
Speaker 1:Second step, as you said, is keep up to date with the information. So subscribe to the best newsletter in the industry. I was referencing yesterday Matt Wolfe on YouTube, where you can really follow every week the latest development in AI over the last week, and that's one of my main sources of information, along with some of the newsletters. So I think that's the second step. The third step really is to identify someone in your business that is going to own the AI topic. If nobody has that hat or that topic or this responsibility.
Speaker 1:I mean it's going to fall into cracks. Nobody's going to take care of it because it's not assigned to anyone. So I think that's the third step, and the fourth step really is to get going to test, test, test and to have create your own tools. I mean even some basic ones. I mean the $20 that the chat GPT is asking, for example, to create custom GPTs or create projects where you can give information about your business and who you are, how you operate, your style of voice, all of those information. I think that's the best step to get the best results.
Speaker 3:Excellent advice. No, this has been. I was looking forward to it. It's exceeded my expectations and they're already pretty high after having spoken to you yesterday and I know so many people were keen for us to connect, which I'm just delighted, so tell everyone how they can find out more about your businesses. If you want, obviously, partnerships that are likely listening to this or to follow up and work with you directly.
Speaker 1:Yes, so they can go on aitourismca, so they can subscribe to our newsletter. That's a good point. I mean, we have the site in French and English and we send a newsletter every two weeks with the latest trends in AI and tourism, so that's a good point. And they can also connect with me on LinkedIn, jean-philippe Duchesneau, and I'll be glad to talk to everyone.
Speaker 3:Amazing and we've connected and we're certainly going to keep in touch and I'll look forward to seeing you next time in Montreal.
Speaker 1:So merci beaucoup, jean-philippe or JP as you prefer.
Speaker 3:Great to speak to you and I wish you every success with your business for the next decade. Thank you very much. I was really happy to be here. I now have the privilege to sit down to speak to Geneviève Turner, who is the GM of Sustainable Tourism Quebec, who is here for this amazing conference. Welcome, geneviève, great to have you with us, bonjour.
Speaker 8:Thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Thank you for doing this in English as well.
Speaker 8:Yeah, I'm trying.
Speaker 3:No, it's excellent, and so tell us a little bit about your background and, specifically, what is Sustainable Tourism Quebec?
Speaker 8:Yeah, this is a non-profit organization that has been founded by a professional in tourism in 2020, well, 2021, because we really wanted to, to you know, face the the challenge and do our parts. So our um, our mission is to inspire a change, support the transition and mobilize the entire tourism sector in quebec through collaboration and sharing the knowledge you know, so that people are all on the same basic about sustainable tourism and sustainable development and we promote the sustainable initiative. So we want to inspire.
Speaker 3:Fantastic. All right, so you are based close to Montreal. We're obviously here in Quebec City together. All right, so you are based close to Montreal. We're obviously here in Quebec City together. Clearly, there's a lot of connections between what you do with the event, with MT Lab, and the theme of innovation and sustainability. But what specifically brought you to this conference?
Speaker 8:Yeah well, sustainable Tourism Quebec is a partner of MT Lab. We are a strategic partner. And Destination Quebec City is a member of our organization that is really invested with us since the beginning.
Speaker 3:Very cool.
Speaker 8:And we gave a workshop yesterday about because we are developing. We had developed a carbon footprint emission calculator for the organization in tourism.
Speaker 3:Oh, very cool.
Speaker 8:Specifically for the territory of Quebec.
Speaker 3:And that's why I was here. So you have many reasons to be here and since this is the very first conference of its kind, I'd love to hear what your experience is, beyond, obviously, giving the presentation and being a partner what your experience has been at the conference. I know there are plans to do this at least next year and potentially for three years. I've found it incredibly informative, insightful and inspiring. What have been some of the takeaways for you?
Speaker 8:Well, I really enjoyed it. We do an event like this as well every year, but it's less bigger of course because there's not like the innovation part really, and I will go back with full of ideas and hopes that people will do what they say they will do, because there was a lot of good things that way that came out and I like that. We, we, we also, uh, highlight the. The paradox is that a word?
Speaker 3:yeah, that's right yeah so we?
Speaker 8:I like to see now what we're going to do with it. And I'll be part of it, of course, yeah.
Speaker 3:No, it's so true. Exactly what you say is that people leave feeling inspired, but the question is whether or not they're actually going to maintain and keep up their commitment. So tell us some of the initiatives that you have on in 2025 with sustainability in Quebec, because I've seen some really interesting examples here and I wasn't able to attend your session yesterday, so I'd love for you to highlight for our global listeners some of the initiatives that you're undertaking.
Speaker 8:Well, especially like this measurement of carbon footprint, because we think that there will be more and more rules and incentives that will require to be engaged in a sustainable tourism transition, and one of the ways to adapt is to integrate new management practices like the measurement of carbon footprint. So I think we need to see where we are, to try to make a plan about it. So that's where we are right now. We have a lot of projects. I could go on for a long time, but mainly right now this is my focus. I want that we try to play with this. There are rules everywhere in the world You've seen Queenstown and everything so they have a super nice objective.
Speaker 8:I hope we can do the same.
Speaker 3:Yeah, matt, who, depending on when people are listening to this or the sequence, obviously he was featured on this podcast as well and he highlighted 2030 to give that pressure to your point about the commitment is that you can't put it too far away 2040, 2050, you don't feel that same level of responsibility. So what are you going to do by 2030? I'm curious, what brought you into this space? Were you in tourism before?
Speaker 8:Yeah, I've always been in tourism. I've worked like so many jobs, like hotels. I've done it all restaurants and I was a travel agent also for a lot of years?
Speaker 3:Oh, no way, that's cool. And how long have you been? Because you were actually a founding partner in this business.
Speaker 8:Yes, so yeah, in 2020, when everything stops. I was a travel agent, so I didn't have a lot of jobs. So I invested my time in creating this organization with other people and I had really anyway, I was already like about to to operate the change, because I had a lot of uh conscience about what I was doing, yeah, so of the impacts and I wanted to make it better and how big is the organization?
Speaker 3:take us a little bit through the team that's involved of uh with sustainability Quebec. How large is the group and the team that you work with?
Speaker 8:Oh well, I'm not. We are now two officially since last March yeah. So yeah, but there's a lot of volunteer working with us. A lot of people here in this event are invested in engaging our organization one way or another. They give time, and so that's really nice to see people.
Speaker 3:just you know that's fantastic yeah sounds like you have found your calling. As we would say in english, you're like there's probably a better french expression for that but you have found your path and your way. This is yes and for those of our listeners that want to learn more, to connect with you or to find out more about the organization. Where should they go?
Speaker 8:well, our website is a very good entry because we are full of free resources. It's all in French, though.
Speaker 3:They can use Google Translate.
Speaker 8:So it's wwwtourismedurablequebec, so it's kind of hard.
Speaker 3:The French sounds so much better. Say it one more time to make sure everyone gets it wwwtourismedurablequebec.
Speaker 8:Nice, much better, but I'd like yes, but say it one more time, so make sure everyone gets it uh, tourism, durable, point that quebec nice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm sure everyone will be able to find that that's uh yeah, are you? Guys active on social media as well yeah, we have social media.
Speaker 8:Well, my colleague is working on it now I, you know me, it's not my uh not your superpower.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, and I'm assuming you're on LinkedIn though, too.
Speaker 8:If people want to connect with you directly. Yes, I am Jeanne-Pierre Turner.
Speaker 3:Yes, oh, that's amazing. Well, it's a real pleasure meeting you. I'm glad that you are part of this event. It really has been such a special couple of days here and I think the community I didn't have. I mean, I had a great appreciation for Quebec. I love coming here, but the people are truly wonderful and I think that's one thing I want to get across and that's why it's nice. You actually offered to sit down and speak to me as well and saying you know my English? I was like no, my French. I feel terrible that my French isn't better, but the fact that you are willing and that and there is just everyone here is so welcoming and so so kind and offering up. So thank you for making the time and I wish you every success.
Speaker 8:Thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 3:All right. Now I have the pleasure to speak to a really unique business. Actually, this guy founded Quebec Campervan Electric Campervans. I love campervans myself. Many of my listeners know I've taken quite a few trips in campervans. I think that's what my I want my retirement life to look like. But his name is Olivier Marcoux and he is based here in Quebec City.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we're recently based in Quebec City. Actually, we are opening our second office in Quebec. We initially opened in Bromont, which is not far from Montreal for some that know. So the two main cities in Quebec.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Now, how did you start this, when did you start it and how did this all come about for you?
Speaker 5:So during the end of the pandemic so 2021, we opened our first office in Bromont, basically a small startup that I wanted to live from. My passion, which was traveling and the freedom of the camper van, brings you a lot of great experiences, so I wanted to share that experience with others. We started with seven vehicles. We're today, at four years later five years later, actually at 25 and opening our second office in Quebec.
Speaker 3:Amazing Good for you. And so tell us about these electric vehicles themselves. What type of vehicles are you offering people in these camper vans?
Speaker 5:So the vehicles is a Ford Transit E-Transit. Actually, it's the same format than gas-powered vehicles. The only difference is the motor itself. Why it's interesting is because we're the first one in the motor itself. Why it's interesting because we're the first one in North America that started it and it we started since we wanted to continue to grow without having in the back of our mind a feeling we're growing something that in a foreseeable future will will have to change in some way or another, since we're promoting the green beauty and the rustic Quebec region, which is beautiful for all its nature, but at the same time we're using our gas-powered vehicle, which consumes 20, 25 liters per 100 kilometers. So we're trying to simply find another way to to continue to grow and this option came up. We started with one vehicle and now half of our fleet actually in Bromont is 100% electric powered and we're fully booked actually for the past four years and going strong. The reason why we're opening 100% electric second office in Quebec.
Speaker 3:Very cool. So tell everyone where Bromont is for our global listeners. They may be familiar with Quebec City. On a map they can obviously look it up as well, but where's Bromont?
Speaker 5:Bromont is just south from Montreal, so it's an hour north from Jay Peak. So right across the border you have Jay Peak, Burlington and Vermont, so it's really close to basically five hours from New York.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you want another reference. No, that's great for all our American listeners. That is our biggest audience.
Speaker 4:So that is helpful context 100%, do you?
Speaker 3:actually have a lot of Americans that come across to rent camper vans here in quebec and interestingly, actually, there's a lot of people that come across the border with their own camper vans.
Speaker 5:Uh, our main clients are from france, from belgium, from switzerland. Uh, we uh have some clients that come across the pond to basically rent for one, two, three, four weeks, sometimes, due to the fact that there's that aspect of freedom that you know from all your trips. People don't necessarily want to rent 20 Airbnbs to travel and visit Quebec, since it's such a big province, quebec, since it's such a big province, so they have this sort of freedom to, to, to do maybe two, three thousand kilometers during their their whole trip, and and and simply stay in the same house at the same time all the time so is the majority of your customers at international.
Speaker 3:It's not. It's not keep it watch. Not the locals, it's actually international travelers coming to Quebec yeah, absolutely and absolutely and it's.
Speaker 5:We have a lot of Quebecois as well, maybe 30%, 40%, but the majority of it and all our marketing because for French and, as I said, french-speaking Europeans mainly, we focus our marketing towards them Organically. That's what they want, towards them Organically. That's what they want. There's a lot of effort from the Minister of Tourism to showcase Quebec's great traits, great nature, and that's what they want. So the vehicle itself actually carries that, so it helps actually do exactly what they want to see.
Speaker 3:And how have you marketed yourselves? I mean to grow to 25 vehicles, two destinations is such a great success story. How have you actually been able to find those customers? How have they found you? Are you using social media, search engine optimization? What's been your marketing strategy to grow this business?
Speaker 5:There's a lot of luck, to be 100% sincere. So initially, initially, when the borders were closed so it was 100% Quebecois people that were during the pandemic, remembering that all the borders, the flights and everything, unless it was mandatory you couldn't cross once that opened. So our government, in on this first year actually of our business opening, opened the borders at the end of the summer season, so around September if I recall correctly, and two weeks before they opened they mentioned it and from that point on we actually received a ton of booking to complete our season from September, october and even November, and that's from France, actually from Belgium, from Switzerland, and from that point on I was like wow, what an opportunity to tackle. You know with you know SEO. So all the lexics, so all the words we use focus on the vocabulary they use, which is different from Quebecois, to talk about a camper van. Obviously it's a camper porté. So all these specific differences we focus on to make sure that they understand what we do basically and they are able to rent correctly our vehicles.
Speaker 3:And out of interest. Do you partner with any travel agencies to sell the camper vans or are you doing everything? Uh, b2c or consumer direct?
Speaker 5:yeah. So we're 100 organic. We started doing some just that's really funny because there's so many ways to get some clients but initially 100 organic for maybe the first three years. We're.
Speaker 5:We're in a certain way a small ad agency because we're working directly with influencers as well. So all our vans, when they're not with clients, we want them to be driven by influencers, by promoters, by content creators, so that they can showcase and obviously reach to those potential clients. Otherwise, we partner with tourist organization to showcase what they have, what's to be done in a van in their region, because nowadays, even post-pandemic, this trend is growing also a lot. Even though people might think it was a bubble, this van life thing, hashtag van life it's still something that's growing. Actually, in north america, certainly in que I mean, we don't see any trends of the rental going down. So for me it's something that these are the things that we do to stay organic, meaning that we don't need to go through a travel agency that takes its cut. Maybe we will at a certain point in time, since we're still small with 25 trucks, when you compare to bigger businesses like Canada Dream, for instance, that have hundreds and hundreds of vehicles, at that point it might be necessary.
Speaker 3:That's great. There are large global conglomerates now that are buying up all these camper van companies, so hopefully you'll not only at some point find yourself in that position but potentially scale this business and maybe you don't even need to be acquired. But it's been a real pleasure meeting you. Tell me a little bit about what brought you to this event this year.
Speaker 5:The event itself, I mean, is a reproduction of an event that's called e-tourisme in Pau, which is in France. That's basically gathering all the people from the industry together to evolve and innovate in the tourism industry. So to me it's necessary to understand what they think, where we're heading and, ultimately, how to integrate all those practices, whether it's through a conference or whether it's basically through talking one-on-one with all these people. As you know, time is really difficult to have these days, so when you're able to see all these people for 48 hours and have a face-to-face discussion with them, it helps really to grow our business and the van life industry as a whole in Quebec.
Speaker 3:That's awesome, I'm glad, so obviously it worked out well for you. You're happy to be here and clearly you're going to come back then, by the sounds of it.
Speaker 5:Absolutely 100%. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:Olivier, it's been a wonderful pleasure to meet you. Obviously, I'm thrilled that you've got such a Quebec success story to be able to share in tourism and sustainability. You fit this event perfectly. But tell everyone if they want to find out more information about Bromont Campervan or Quebec Campervan or to reach out to you directly.
Speaker 5:For sure. So obviously Brom-campervancom, quebec-campervancom really easy to find us online. We've got a few articles about the company that were written by a lot of journalism and the evolution of it, and obviously my email is on the website if they ever want to call. It's going to be a pleasure to discuss.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. Well, thank you again and, yeah, good luck in the year ahead. I now have the pleasure to sit down with Simon Jacobs, who you're going to hear, has a lovely English accent, but he's actually been in Quebec most of his life. Here in Quebec City. He is a tour guide, he's an entrepreneur. He has two different businesses. Bonjour, simon, welcome, great to have you with us.
Speaker 7:Merci beaucoup, bonjour. How are you doing? Okay, yeah, that's the English accent.
Speaker 3:There you go. Obviously you're so wonderfully fluent seeing you navigate the crowd. But tell us, simon, a bit of your background and what brings you here.
Speaker 7:Oh, my goodness, I came here actually to play with a symphony orchestra. Um, I played with the quebec symphony for 20 years and then decided you know what, being there done that sounds kind of weird. But uh went from there and did an mba. I was running something called the morin center, which is, uh, I'm pretty much community involved as well. So I was running as executive director for the Morin Center. I also did a history of the Jewish history of Quebec City. We have books published Amazing. Then I'm on the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network, which is actually something that you should be, people should be looking up if you're interested in the history of Quebec across the entire province. And then ended up as a tour guide and also working now as the general manager for Tour Voir Quebec and for Immersion Quebec.
Speaker 3:Well, let's talk about the day tours first. I want to talk about the touring because I love. I mean, when I first arrived in Quebec City here for this conference, one of the startups actually took me on a walking tour. And obviously you know Stéphane that runs Novam. He runs a startup but he also it's sort of his passion that he does walking tours.
Speaker 7:It's my favorite. I mean when I started doing tours. It's like I'm home. Here's what I want to do. Unfortunately, I have a bum knee, so I'm waiting for that to get better.
Speaker 3:So tell us about that side of your business. So tell us about Tourvoir, quebec and the types of tours that you run here in Quebec City.
Speaker 7:Okay, so Tourvoir is a company that's been around for 20 years. We, in fact, have received now, for the last few years, the best of the best from TripAdvisor. That means in the top 1% in the world, because we just get great reviews.
Speaker 7:They're always good and this is an amazing place to have a tour company because it's so historic. So the idea of doing a tour it's usually between two and two and a half hours long if you take a general tour and that's going to give you an idea of basically the culture, the history and also things to do. So it's a really good thing to do. Basically wherever you go, but especially in Quebec City, take a tour at the beginning of your trip. That way you're not going to miss out on some of the stuff that you may want to or you're going to hear some really good things that you didn't know about.
Speaker 7:Generally, we tell our guides, like find out about your guests, because we don't have large groups, we have up to 15 people and I always tell my guides walk with your people, find out who they are and find out what interests them. You know, if you have a whole bunch of doctors, you could talk about the Augustine Monastery, where they have a museum on souls and stuff that used to hack people apart with. It could be accounting, it could be insurance. If you want to know about Quebec, we have the answers.
Speaker 3:Well, tell us for our listeners that have not been to Quebec City, or those that have been but don't have a full understanding of what would be three reasons why they should come to Quebec City and do a walking tour. What are they going to experience on a walking tour with you? I've got one example to share from my experience, but I'd love to hear yours first.
Speaker 7:Oh dang, I was hoping to hear yours, I want to see if it's actually one of the same.
Speaker 3:Actually go for it.
Speaker 7:Okay, well, I was kind of mentioning about that. Well, first of all, history. There is so much history here. I actually say to people you know, some people are like, oh, I just want to walk around I say that walking around is like looking at the architecture, it's like looking at a skeleton. You see the bones, but who the heck is it? So what you want to know is we put the flesh on the bones, we tell the stories and the guides will tell the stories behind it. So you're just not looking at a building, but you're looking at the history, the stories that are associated with that. Obviously, we can't do everything, but we at least give you a good introduction. So number one, history. Number two is, for instance, things to do or how to progress in your day or your time that you're here, and so that's number two. Or your time that you're here, and so that's number two. Number three would be, as I said, going to restaurants to go to, how to get the shortcuts.
Speaker 3:The cuisine. You've got to get poutine.
Speaker 7:Oh, my God, yeah, where to get the poutine. Now there's another sticky point Places to go see. Do you have a car? In that case, what time of the year Can you go to the island of Orleans? It's gorgeous or can you go further away? I usually tell people when I'm working as a guide is actually I have. My mission is to make you want to come back for two weeks, and my recommendation would be one week in Quebec, one week on sorry, three days on the South Shore, three days on the North Shore.
Speaker 1:Because it is.
Speaker 7:I love this place. I'm transplanted and I love it. It's amazing here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I totally understand it. But now tell us about your other business. Tell us about Immersion Quebec.
Speaker 7:Okay, immersion. Quebec is actually really neat because, first of all, it's an historic building, a Maison Chevalier, very close to the Place Royale, which is where you saw the first church, and it's in the basement 1752 it was built, so it's an incredible space. We have a VR presentation of it's, like a film but you're actually totally immersed in it of the history of Quebec starting at, in fact, before the French arrived in 1735, sorry, 1535, with Jacques Cartier. So you see the Native Americans, you actually start off in a longhouse and then you see the Native Americans, you actually start off in a longhouse and then you see the French arrive.
Speaker 7:And what we've done is we've taken the topography of the city, recreated that, and then basically taken historical maps and buildings and pictures to recreate what Quebec would have looked like through the ages. And so you see, like the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, you're going to see literally the plains of Abraham, the fields You're going to be flying over, you're going to see the soldiers going to it. Then you're going to come to the port time when this was a major, major port in North America Up until the present day, and you're actually going to be doing a flyover in a drone where you're suspended 300 feet in the air looking around, and you have, because it's VR, you have full availability to look around. It's incredible.
Speaker 3:That's amazing, and if people want to find out more about this, where should they go?
Speaker 7:Oh, basically go on the website, which would be immersionquebeccom. If you want to do the walking tours, Tour of Loire, Quebec, book with us directly. It's always better. That way we have more flexibility as well, and we also do private tours. We can arrange bus tours. If you want to go with a chauffeur, for instance, or go further afield, we can also arrange that.
Speaker 3:Well, that's great. Well, it's been fantastic to meet you here. I guess the one last question, your takeaway. Clearly, there's many benefits of you being here at this conference for the first time. Is there anything that stood out to you in particular that you're going to walk away from this conference with, and are you going to plan to come back next year?
Speaker 7:I do plan to come back next year. My brain has exploded just with the idea of how artificial intelligence can be used, because I had certain ideas about it, but I can see the application could be far, far greater than I even ever experienced. Of course, the other thing to do with that is how to deal with the time to learn it and to apply it, but I think it's going to be worth it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I totally agree. There's some great startups here that people will hear to listen to on this session. But, simon, it's a real pleasure to meet you and good luck with your business in the next year.
Speaker 7:Thank you so much. I hope to see you again. Likewise.
Speaker 3:Hello everyone. I just wanted to say what an extraordinary experience I've had here, so now I have the privilege to finish up this conference by speaking to Florence Barbeau, who is the Director of Partnerships at MT Lab. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 9:Hi, dan, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and you've been such a joy to speak to over the last couple of days, and a number of people had highlighted just how important your role is at MT Lab, given the Director of Partnerships, and I thought it'd be a perfect way to wrap up this event because I want to get your perspective on what's happened here the last couple of days, some of the takeaways. But before we do that, tell everyone a little bit about your role at MT Lab.
Speaker 9:Yeah, of course. So I'm director of partnerships, but I actually work more in a continuum with our different partners, who are Tourism Montreal, tourism well, destination Quebec City and like other territories, but also corporates and public associations.
Speaker 3:Very cool and so you have actually been there. You're a third employee. You've been there for seven years. It started eight years ago and so you've had many hats over that time. But tell us you work with for those people that heard a little bit from Marten about what MT Labs does, I know you guys work with startups. You also do events. You guys help with fundraising. Tell us all the other aspects, I guess, of MT Lab that people are just coming to understand on this episode.
Speaker 9:Yeah, of course. So we have pretty much three main clients, which are partners, startups and the rest of the industry, and so, as you said, I've worked with all of them. I've been the one accompanying all the startups for more than two years and now I'm working with the partners, which, well, it helped me now working with the startups, helping the partners now, because I can be a better matchmaker and being able to have a better overview of who is part of MTLAB, who did what and who's owner of which projects. So I make bridges between all of these people and I really listen to all of their needs, what the solutions are on the market, what are the texts needed and everything. So I make people work together.
Speaker 3:That's great and this event obviously is the first of its kind, but you're going to be planning to do this for a year or two longer and it was such an amazing first event. What were some of the, I guess, the big takeaways for you? Because clearly you were involved in bringing this together. You've got an amazing team. There seems to be such a wonderful dynamic amongst the 20 people that work at MT Lab the MT love, as I've come to understand it Exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, tell us what were some of the highlights for you over the last couple of days.
Speaker 9:Of course. It's funny because yesterday, when we came back to the hotel, my colleagues and I were talking about our top three.
Speaker 3:Oh great, Okay, perfect. I'm very keen to hear.
Speaker 9:So it's pretty much about all of the encounters and all the people I met and met again because, like, I know a lot of people there but there are still a lot of people to to meet, and understanding what they're doing and how I can help them and and vice versa. So it's really about collaboration and people have been so inspired by the conferences, the meetings and everything that it was easier in this context to create new bonds and being myself more inspired for my next projects.
Speaker 3:That's fantastic. That was two. Was there one more? There was three, yeah.
Speaker 9:Well, the three were pretty much about the meetings. Yeah, being able to meet again with people I've met, maybe like five years ago before COVID, and then meeting them in person, was so fun. But I remember being able to being a better matchmaker now that being able to have this person in well, in person to the event, being able to help them connect, but face-to-face. So it was fun to see these new encounters just like being created and people talk and have so many ideas coming up. People talk and have so many ideas coming up.
Speaker 3:So it was uh, yeah, I, I have to um, to, um, what's have?
Speaker 8:we, I have to um um after think through no, I have to uh admit something. So I have to admit something.
Speaker 9:I haven't been to any of the conferences neither of the workshops. All right, you've been so busy. Yes, I've been so busy just talking to people, and I was a personal concierge for the partners for this event, so everyone yeah, I've been busy just helping everyone. That's why.
Speaker 3:I've seen you buzzing around Attaining their goals.
Speaker 9:No, you've been working. I get it.
Speaker 3:You weren't here to be, attending it's very different from your perspective, and that's why I wanted to have this conversation with you, because you know you were key in bringing this event together, and so I'm keen to see what stood out to you, because I'm sure you're going to take away from this and think about what you want to do for next year, because we're back here at the port, because I guess you guys had planned this for two years, so the idea is to be back at this location next year, which you had about 400 people this year, and obviously you can probably host a few more, but probably not a lot more, because this is pretty much a capacity. But what are some of the thoughts that are going through your mind about, maybe, what you want to do next year, if anything you want to do differently, if that stood out to you already yeah, well, my personal goal is always to help, uh, the people I work with in these organizations, being better innovators and entrepreneurs.
Speaker 9:So, um, we used to just be put people all together in the same room and let things happen, but now for next year, I'd really like to reverse things like the other way around, and work more on their needs, their priorities, really understanding what they're doing, listening, talking, and then being able to be a better matchmaker with my team, um, since, like, we can then connect more the needs with the solutions.
Speaker 3:So, instead of the other way around, Well, in the startup world, obviously, matchmaking is everything when it comes to investors and partners and people that can work and collaborate together, so I would also like to hear from your perspective. I asked Martin about what he has planned for MT Lab the year ahead. I know you've got this demo day coming up in June, but what are some of the other initiatives that maybe you're working across that we could highlight with our listeners about MT Lab's plans for 2025 and beyond?
Speaker 9:Yeah, of course, we host demo days, which are really well known, usually for meetings with VCs, which are really well known, usually for meetings with VCs. But in our world, demo days for partners are the same kind of idea, but using events as a platform to create these meetings and encounters between startups and partners on a certain theme. So we've done harmonious cohabitation I don't know if that's the right translation We've done business analytics, bi, and we've done also how to put the visitor in the center of an experience by the past. And then this year our demo day will be on inter-sectors. So how to match tourism with manufacturing to health, how we can inspire each other on this specific theme.
Speaker 3:Well, that's cool and I know you guys have had a big focus on AI. There's some AI startups that are here, and we spoke to JP, who's involved with you guys, right, he's a successful entrepreneur. Yeah, great guy yeah fantastic and I think people got that from our conversation. What are some of the trends that you're paying attention to, given your role in the industry? Are there any other trends that are standing out to you in Quebec tourism?
Speaker 9:Yeah, of course, sustainability and tourism. We have to do something more and I think it's our big focus now. But there are so many things. When we say we're an incubator in tourism, people think, oh, travel, oh, how to encourage tourists to visit the city. Yes, of course, all of that, but we are looking for solutions to answer different kinds of needs in this industry, answer different kinds of needs in this industry. So we're covering like pretty large uh of a, like um of solutions such as like data and how to welcome people on a certain context, and hr sustainability. So we're we're really like really listening to all of the needs of the partners and they have all of the answers. I don't have them. I just listen to them and I put the finger on the right things and I also can make the bridges between all of their needs and understanding what's common between them and so everything that's common like I can also do something more collaborative or collaborative projects on these specific needs. So it's really about listening and doing things and making things happen.
Speaker 3:No, that's awesome and that's exactly what we try to do with this show. So like it's a unique skill set that you have and a very valuable one, and I think, even just to highlight that, it's the but yeah. Well, I was going to say you obviously you have a family, you've got a young son, a young daughter, a young daughter. I'm so sorry. No, it's okay, no problem. And so I think one of the things that stands out at least certainly did to me, and I'm sure it's you like sustainability becomes that much more important when, all of a sudden, you know you think of that next generation exactly and what the world is going to look like for them, and so um very curious to know about any uh your personal travel plans for 2025.
Speaker 3:Where are you guys? Are you guys going anywhere as a family this summer? What's on your list?
Speaker 9:yeah, well, I have the the chance of having a partner in life who is French, so we mostly travel back and forth. Friends in Quebec, we live in Quebec, but we have to visit the family in France. But we have a lot of friends coming up this year, so I don't know what will be our plans. I'm just coming back from a destination in the south.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's cool and there's so much to do here in Quebec, so the fact that you want people to come to you, and especially given things that are happening around the world, I think Canadians are going to be exploring more of their own backyard.
Speaker 9:Yes, exactly. It helps me discover what we have here to do in Quebec, because I have to plan the trip for our friends. Yeah, of course, exactly.
Speaker 3:And I really have been amazed at all the sustainable options. Even on this conversation we were speaking about electric camper vans. There's just so many great examples of innovation around sustainability in Quebec that I wasn't familiar with, so that was a big highlight and takeaway for me.
Speaker 1:You guys have done an extraordinary job at this event.
Speaker 3:Thank you again for bringing me in to be here. It's been such a joy and a pleasure and I really loved meeting you.
Speaker 9:The pleasure was ours, I'm sorry, the pleasure was ours, dan, of course.
Speaker 3:Thank you Florence. Yeah, and I look forward to keep in touch with you and I said to Martin, hopefully I'll see you guys in June. I'm going to try and come up for the demo day.
Speaker 9:Of course, and if you want to come to Entelab in our offices, you're always more than welcome to work there with us.
Speaker 3:Well, I'll highlight to our listeners too, because you do actually have an office in Toronto. We were actually thinking about doing some events there together. You have a presence in that city as well.
Speaker 9:And our office there is with Impact On, who are also very involved in sustainability and tourism.
Speaker 3:Oh, interesting, and you also have an office in Quebec City where we are here and you're also adding another office too. I understand.
Speaker 9:Well, eventually in Abitibi-Témiscamaïg, probably in Rwanda, where our next poll in regenerative tourism is going to be.
Speaker 3:Well, it's been a real pleasure speaking to you, florence. I certainly look forward to keeping in touch and terrific to meet you and the team Safe travels home, and we'll see each other again soon.
Speaker 9:Same. Thank you so much, Dan See you soon. Merci beaucoup, merci.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much for listening to our latest episode of Travel Trends, the event Spotlight from Les Grand Grand Remus from Quebec City.
Speaker 3:I want to say thanks again to MT Lab for bringing me in for this amazing event. The team was absolutely extraordinary to work with from start to finish days in Montreal and staying connected to the incredible startup community, which, of course, was a connection to us, because Andrew Lockhead from Stay22, who was part of the first contingent of startups eight years ago and has actually been one of the main sponsors and initial partners of the Travel Trends podcast, so he kindly introduced us and we had the most extraordinary time. So thanks again for everyone for taking the time to speak to us and, don't forget, for all of our listeners. We actually do post clips and highlights on our social channels at TravelTrendsPodcastcom, which you can check out on YouTube and Instagram and LinkedIn, and then we also send out a monthly newsletter of all of our latest episodes and our upcoming travels for the next month. So be sure to check that out as well, and we look forward to bringing you more spotlights as we focus on events, destinations and startups. Until next time, safe travels.
