Honoured to Receive Award

At the Tourism Cafe, we have specialized in tourism instructional design since our company's inception. Prior to launching the company, Dr. Arsenault designed several graduate certificates and degrees for Royal Roads University and multi-year, long-standing tourism training programs.

On January 31st, Marty Eberth, Travel Alberta's Director of Experience Development and Nancy Arsenault participated, with 10 other Canadian award winners, in the Institute 4 Performance and Learning first online national awards presentation.

Travel Alberta’s SHiFT: Transforming Products to Experiences program received the Award Excellence for Designing Curricula for its program design and six years of continual evolution and enhancement.

SHiFT is a truly unique tourism industry training curriculum in Canada’s tourism industry. It is Travel Alberta's most in-depth training program that exemplifies the power of collaboration in the development, delivery and post-course care of participants enrolled in the program. According to Eberth "SHiFT has become the most sought-after training program we offer at Travel Alberta – and that’s because of the course content and program design. A big thanks to Nancy and the Tourism Café – and to all of our SHiFT alumni who are champions and ambassadors and who so willingly allow us to showcase their great work." Individual and organizational support is realized via case studies, guest speaking engagements, hosting experiences, hosting the program, becoming program advocates but most importantly - implementing their learning.

The benefits of this unique Canadian program touch five learner groups each year.

And while the award was accepted by Eberth (Travel Alberta) and Arsenault (Tourism Cafe), the success of SHiFT has been the result of so many other individuals and organizations. While too many to mention, key ones with one or more years of commitment include Alberta's Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism, Earth Rhythms, Tourism Jasper, Edmonton, Calgary, Banff and Lake Louise, the towns of Drumheller and Sylvan Lake, and Community Futures.