New Travel Nunavut president leads plan for industry growth

As the new president of Travel Nunavut, Alex Stubbing hopes to help the organization achieve its goal of making the territory’s travel sector a billion-dollar-a-year industry employing 5,000 people by 2030.

Stubbing, who was born and raised in Iqaluit, comes to Travel Nunavut after nearly two decades with the Government of Nunavut, Nunavut Parks, and Parks Canada.

He held various positions with the GN, including assistant deputy minister of culture and heritage. He officially stepped into Travel Nunavut’s top spot on Sept. 9.

This week, Stubbing is involved with the organization’s annual conference taking place in Iqaluit. It was at last year’s conference that Travel Nunavut set its goal of becoming a billion-dollar-a-year industry by 2030.

“All of those roles really prepared me in a neat way for the different challenges that I’ll experience in this new role as the president and CEO of Travel Nunavut,” he said in an interview.

Stubbing splits his time between Iqaluit and Ottawa.

“We believe our path to growing the travel industry falls in hand with our strategic plan,” he said.

He outlined a six-pillar approach that includes marketing, community engagement, involvement in community growth, advocating for infrastructure, creating partnerships, and developing industry intelligence.

As president, Stubbing said he hopes to create a study to measure the growth of the industry year to year.

“If we do a baseline economic impact study now, that will give us a much better idea of where we are and where we need to go. And hopefully, we can do that study every year or every second year and see the growth,” he said.

He also pointed to Travel Nunavut’s advocacy for improvements to infrastructure in the aviation, shipping and cruise industries to increase the capacity of services.

“We’re going to need to start building runways that these newer aircraft can actually land on, those are some of the key initiatives we want to continue to grow,” he said.

“You get new infrastructure, you have a growing population and it all just has a domino effect on the growth of the industry.”

Stubbing was asked how much revenue the travel industry generated this year and how many people are employed in the industry, but he only referenced numbers from 2019.

Travel Nunavut’s annual conference began Wednesday in Iqaluit at the Frobisher Inn and runs until Friday.

The conference agenda includes panel sessions, presentations on industry updates, an awards ceremony, and two training sessions for members.

“This will be a great chance for our members and stakeholders in the travel industry to come together,” Stubbing said.