#exploreNWAB Festival ignites Alberta travel, buy local buzz
Streaming LIVE via horseback, via the bubble tea shops and via the golf greens and cocktail bars of Whitecourt and Grande Prairie, the #exploreNWAB Festival put northern Alberta on Canadians' travel radar in a big way, May 4 - 15, 2025.
How? The festival, which was hosted entirely online via social media, generated:
50,000+ video views
2000+ engagements
for the 18 participating local businesses
Check out the festival recap here, to see all the fun!
Why an online festival
Tourism partners raising digital awareness, leveraging social media training
The #exploreNWAB Festival was built on Seekers Media's award-winning economic development model—which in past has supported regional festivals with the Columbia Basin Trust and Northeast Alberta (NEAB).
This meant that co-presenting festival partners, Whitecourt Tourism and Grande Prairie Regional Tourism, were able to leverage the festival to provide direct training and benefits for members. The online festival trained participants in the basics of hosting their own live videos on social media to amplify exposure and generate sales and bookings.
Edmonton-based social media expert and influencer Linda Hoang, founder of Linda Hoang Digital, was one of the coaches.
"Even in 1-1 sessions with participating businesses, a desire to reach more people was a shared goal," Hoang reflects. "When you think about that, it makes sense to invest in creating more digital content, creative content, switching up what you’re doing."
"Already I've had some follow-up conversations, and the main sentiment I'm hearing is they were so happy to do something different.
It inspired them to think about what else they can do to engage people on social and turn people into visitors and customers.
They're all working on these plans, and that intentional planning and strategy and thinking, 'what do I want to get out of this? What goals is this helping me achieve?' Actually putting that down in a plan was new for pretty much everyone regardless of their experience, that process of building a digital marketing plan."
No place like ...gnome?
Engaging travelers in northern Alberta
Even for Linda herself, the festival drove new discovery about what's in her own backyard. "Watching Beaver Creek General Store's live, I said, 'That’s the perfect yellow gnome I’ve been looking for, you need to save that for me!'"
I’m always looking for things to do in Alberta, and being part of the festival is a super easy way to even educate myself about what’s available not far from Edmonton. I didn’t know some of these experiences existed."
Another example: go for a shopping tour of Grande Prairie's "The Bead Lodge", to not only see what's on their shelves, but how Fran Rogers—a Woodland Cree woman and member of the Sturgenon Lake Cree Nation entrepreneur—builds community through their #explorenwab Festival broadcast.
"It reaffirmed my belief there’s so much to do in Alberta," says Hoang, "and this virtual festival makes it really simple, easy and convenient to find out about these operators and businesses and plan a trip."
Seeking to generate more business for your region?
For regional and destination tourism organizations (RTOs, DTOs), local chambers and local economic development leads, if you want to amplify stakeholder socials, support digital literacy and build the buzz for your membership, reach out to Jim Barr (Seekers Media founder and CEO) for more information.