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"Careers and personal/family priorities have ebbs and flows. Set your own path and find what works for you. Create your version of success."
I'm Meaghan Ferrigno, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Destination Canada. In my spare time, I enjoy spending quality time with my husband and two kids and of course, travelling too!
As we emerge from the pandemic, we have two parallel and equally important windows of opportunity. The first is around supporting short-term recovery (and revenue regeneration) to tourism businesses that have been so greatly impacted. The second is setting the foundation for longer-term resilience.
While there are many unknowns, what we do know is that travel will be different. Tourism businesses will operate differently, and our guests will choose differently.
Over the past months, I have been focused on producing and sharing a key piece of research called: Tourism's Big Shift - Key Trends Shaping the Future of Canada's Tourism Industry. This report examines changes in the industry and in consumer behaviours along with their potential implications. These findings are key to accelerating our recovery, and I have been working hard to ensure these findings are easily accessible and applicable to tourism businesses. As an example, I led a webinar for our industry in early February showing real life examples of these trends in practice. It was fantastic to see the response from this effort with more than 1700 industry members in attendance.
The only constant is change. And while we can’t predict exactly what will change, we can use data to help map out and plan for different scenarios to respond more nimbly.
Destination Canada is striving to become an Insight-Driven Organization, embedding reliable data, innovative analysis, and both qualitative and quantitative reasoning in its decision-making processes.. As such, we are immediately focusing on curating and mobilizing tourism's data ecosystem, delivering deep guest insights, demonstrating tourism's contribution to host communities, and building out a robust and scalable technology foundation to power it all.
This isn’t a change from the past, necessarily, but the need for reliable data and insights has never been more valuable.
As we emerge and enter an extremely competitive environment for talent, my wish is that tourism jobs are coveted and inclusive of diverse people and geographies. This means that tourism jobs provide great employment opportunities, exciting projects and experiences, and are inclusive at all levels and management ranks. I have the privilege to have one of those coveted roles in tourism where my days are filled with the opportunity to work with brilliant marketers, leading thinkers, and cutting-edge technology.
Together, a recovering sector coupled with a highly competitive job market, creates an exciting and immense opportunity for women (and all people) to bring their skills to data and digital roles within tourism.
I am fortunate to have worked in environments that consistently provided opportunities to excel and advance my career, irrespective of gender. From not being overlooked for advancement when I was on maternity leave, to flexibility that allows for employees to support their family commitments with school drop off or pick up, to providing an even playing field with pay equity, these were all evident in the values of the organizations I have worked in.
Destination Canada has a strong Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion framework that is integrated with our corporate strategy. It ensures that our work, workplace, and workforce reflect a diversity of people, perspectives, and experiences within Canada. This has created an organizational culture that has strength in the areas of psychological safety, diversity and representation, equitable treatment, and inclusion.
Having visible diverse role models and female mentors has been critical in helping me chose, and stay with, a career in data and technology. By highlighting these women, it is an opportunity to inspire the next generation of data and digital enthusiasts for the tourism sector.
My mentor once told me “You can have it all, but you may not be able to have it all at the same time”. Careers and personal/family priorities have ebbs and flows. Set your own path and find what works for you and is your version of success.
Digital, technology, and tourism are such exciting areas to be working in. The pace of change provides endless opportunities to innovate, push the boundaries, and try new things. Become comfortable feeling uncomfortable and lean in – we are always in a state of change and continuous learning.
Meaghan brings an exceptional range of expertise in data-enabled competitive strategies and business agility. She is a certified CPA, CMA who holds an MBA in Management Technology from SFU’s Beedie School of Business as well as a PMP designation.
