unDiscovered Tours and Events Saskatchewan

 unDiscovered Tours and Events 

You may not know me but, I have been in the tourism industry for over 30 years, starting my first tour company while still in University. (Saskatchewan Adventours) This first company offered adventure tourism in the area of White-Water Rafting and Downhill Skiing. We only ran the company for a year and a half but completed very successful tours, selling out each time. After moving to Saskatoon, I started a Travel Agency. In our second year we broke sales records with Air Canada. I sold that company in the 4th year for a profit and it continues to operate today as “Vacations Away”. 

I decided to sell that business for 2 reasons; #1 because I realized that it wasn’t my dream and #2 consumer trends were showing that people were really starting to book online and because we were primarily a leisure company and that meant people were taking these bookings into their hands because they could. Case in point, within 2 years of selling that travel agency, 7 companies went out of business (including Canadian Airlines) because of this shift in consumer trends. 

I started Living Skies Events and Tours in 1996 while working at Tourism Saskatoon. The CEO came to me and said “we have a problem and you are going to fix it”. There was no one doing convention tours in Saskatoon at that time. They approached me and asked me to go into a partnership, which I did, and we completed 48 tours in our first season.

Fast forward to 2018 where I was in my 18th year instructing at Saskatchewan Polytechnic and I started thinking about next stage of life. I was looking around at what was happening in the industry and there is nobody in Saskatchewan doing these tours and there is No DMC (Destination Management Company) existing in the Province right now. Further to this Tourism Saskatoon has been actively looking for a tour operating of this scope and capacity, because we cannot move forward with tourism in this province without an operator. This is the opportunity that I am now taking advantage of. 

- 18 years teaching at SIAST (Saskatchewan Polytechnic) 

             Recreation and Community Development Program. 

- Program Head 2012 – 2018.

- 2013 awarded “Tourism Educator” of the year by Saskatchewan Tourism Education Council.

- Master’s Degree in Tourism Management from Royal Roads University.

- Elected to the boards for Tourism Saskatoon and Tourism Saskatchewan

Because of my experience coming back into this part of tourism is very easy. The company has the background, experience, contacts and know how to hit the ground running and continue leading the industry.