According to Cathy Trimble, a board member with Hastings Destination Trails Inc., the organization has been nominated as a finalist for the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario’s 2021 Ontario Tourism Resiliency Awards, in the Collaboration, Outdoor category. These awards specifically acknowledge the hardships that tourism businesses in Ontario have had to go through with COVID19 in 2020. Winners will be announced at the TIAO awards’ ceremony to be held the evening of Oct. 27 in Kanata, a suburb of Ottawa.

Trimble told Bancroft This Week that HDTI Inc. was very excited to be a finalist for TIAO’s 2021 Ontario Tourism Resiliency Awards, in the Collaboration, Outdoor category.

“It is for the whole province. It’s a bit of a coup for the whole group and everybody involved to be able to get something like that during the pandemic,” she says.

TIAO addresses policy issues with the Ontario government that impact the tourism industry, and works on behalf of its members; 200,000 businesses and 400,000 employees across the province. In partnership with Attractions Ontario, the Culinary Tourism Alliance, Indigenous Tourism Ontario and OTEC, TIAO is presenting the 2021 Ontario Tourism Resiliency Awards in the categories of Sustainability, Innovation and Collaboration. These special awards for 2021 acknowledge what a difficult year 2020 had been for the tourism industry due to COVID-19 and the determination and perseverance that businesses showed to overcome the various and enormous hurdles they faced.

The TIAO awards ceremony is the culmination of the 2021 Ontario Tourism Summit, which runs Oct. 26 and Oct. 27. The ceremony will be held on the evening of Oct. 27. Attendees have the option to participate in person or virtually, giving them that choice with the pandemic is still ongoing.

“It’s great to be nominated, although I’m still a bit shocked and surprised. One of the winners last year was the CEO of Science North [Jim Marchbank, who won the Tourism Champion of the Year award],” she says. “So, it’s pretty neat!”