If you run a tourism business or help shape tourism in Ontario’s Highlands, your experience matters. The Ontario’s Highlands Tourism Organization (OHTO) is inviting tourism operators and community partners to take the 2026 Tourism Performance & Sustainability Survey.

Your responses help OHTO understand what’s happening across the region and shape support around the real opportunities and challenges you face. *Survey closes Nov. 12, 2026 at 4 p.m.

TAKE THE SURVEY

What We Heard in the 2025 Survey

The 2025 survey gathered input from 56 tourism operators and community partners across Ontario’s Highlands. Here are some of the key takeaways:

  • Business performance showed signs of improvement. Most respondents said revenue was slightly or significantly better than in 2024. Visitation was generally stable or up, and many operators expected both revenue and visitation to improve in 2026.
  • Profitability has become a bigger challenge. Since 2023, barriers have shifted from labour to the combined pressure of operating costs and visitor spending. These pressures are making it harder to protect margins.
  • Marketing remains a priority. For the second year in a row, marketing and promotion topped the list of investment priorities, followed by recruiting and hiring qualified staff, and capital investments.
  • Climate impacts are affecting operations. Operators reported increased impacts from extreme heat and humidity, nearby wildfires, reduced snowfall and snowpack, storms, and changing water conditions. Many were concerned about climate change and did not feel fully prepared for its effects.

How Your Input Helped Shape 2026

Your feedback helps OHTO turn regional needs into practical support. Findings from the 2025 survey helped guide work in several areas:

Event safety and climate readiness: Reports of weather impacts on festivals, events, and outdoor experiences—and low levels of preparedness—helped inspire an Expand Your Knowledge session with Jeff Jackson Ph.D., one of Canada’s leading experts in risk management and outdoor safety. The session offered a framework to reduce risk, protect participants, and plan for changing conditions. Watch the recording here. Sign in to the member portal to access the recording or click here. 

More marketing support: OHTO introduced a new Festivals & Events calendar that operators can submit their events and experiences to for free, and reinforced industry support for rural operators in small towns in the region through the Small Town Ontario summer campaign to disperse visitation across the region.

Practical tools for promotion: OHTO hosted Expand Your Knowledge sessions that covered working with travel writers and influencers, and using AI responsibly in content creation to help operators improve their marketing reach. Explore Influencer Partnerships 101: Evaluating Value, Risk & Return and its Influencer Partnership Evaluation Worksheet, or watch Keeping the Human in Marketing: Integrating AI Without Losing Authenticity and download the Marketing with AI Checklist & Best Practices Handout.

Why Take the Survey?

The tourism landscape keeps changing. Your response helps OHTO track business performance, understand the pressures and opportunities operators are seeing, and focus programs and partnerships where they can make a difference. It also helps build a clearer picture of how tourism can support communities across Ontario’s Highlands.

Whether you’re a tourism business owner or operator, an experience provider, or a community partner involved in tourism, we want to hear from you. Your perspective will help shape what comes next.

TAKE THE SURVEY