Responsibilities: 

• Develop community partnerships with local businesses through education and promotion in event areas to enhance visitor spending in Georgina, Newmarket, Vaughan, and Markham. Liaison with Business Improvement Areas (BIA), Chambers of Commerce, and municipal economic development departments to enhance business awareness of 2SLGBTQ+ events and programming in 2025. 

• Create surveys that will identify gaps in our events, help with programming improvements, and understand our attendee's demographics. 

Surveys will include:

• Understanding York Pride's lead generation and what leads our events to create unique and memorable experiences for attendees

  1.  Which demographics are most interested in our events and programming? 

  2. Capture feedback from the community, past guests, and new potential visitors. Over 30 days, collect 1000 surveys from the public and businesses. 

  3. Analyze the economic impact on local business and analyze business engagement to determine if our significant events are meeting the metrics we estimated. You will use York Pride 2024 Newmarket BIA businesses as a test sample. You will survey 100 businesses after the festival.

  4. Attend event planning meetings to provide data to improve event design. 

• Attend community events and festivals 40km away from event locations not associated with York Pride and study event design, number of guests onsite, take photos of activities, sponsors, entertainment, art, and event infrastructure, collect business information from vendors, performers etc to help improve York Pride's onsite planning for our events. Including: 

  • Provide tourists with recreational and entertainment promotion on 360 Pride Experience programming for 2025.

  • Collect generic tourism data that could support our event growth through free giveaways (popcorn, cotton candy, bandanas)

• Data collection could be: 

  • E.g. postal codes of visitors attending that event, to see where the majority of the crowd is from

    1. What method of communication did you use to find this event?

    2. How much do you plan to spend today?

    3. What would you like to see at the event next year, or how can we enhance your event experience?  

  • Continue to develop York Pride's "Pride Pod" (mobile event activation) initiative with technology upgrades and immersive layout research for consumers for event outreach deployment.

• Create a TAP (Tourism Action Plan) document for York Pride

  • Create recommendations and supporting policies to grow 2SLGBTQ+ tourism within York Region. 

  • Identify six long-term objectives to increase visitation in the region over the next three years and select two goals to focus on for 2025

  • Identify key accommodation partners for each event municipality. 

    • Create new partnerships and maintain pre-existing relationships. 

    • Design a formula to improve the number of "heads in beds" (overnight stays) 

    • Ensure each company meets equity and inclusivity criteria. 

• Explore opportunities to enhance digital media strategy for tourism through @yorkprideca on social media and the festival. 

  • Experiment with social media layouts and styles that will attract more followers on Instagram.

  • Launch a TikTok account and build content that is appealing to our audience.  

  • Develop consistent content for Instagram and TikTok that follows a weekly schedule.

  • Increase engagement on Facebook with mature followers, expand exposure in 50-100 new groups, and gauge exposure. 

• Meet with RTO 6 (Central Counties Tourism) to prepare survey-gathering strategies and survey systems for major York Pride events.

  • Utilizing Survey Monkey and TypeForm surveying to create engaging questionnaires