THE CARTESIAN CHRONICLES · INDUSTRY INTERVIEWS

Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Spaces: InsideCanada's Tourism Brand with DestinationCanada's Joe Amati

Film tourism that doubles bookings, a record $59 billion summer, and why authenticity is the most bankable asset in travel marketing.

Canada's tourism brand is not maple syrup, moose, and mountains. According to Joe Amati, Senior Executive Director of Global Market and Brand Intelligence at Destination Canada, itis the people: open hearts, open minds, open spaces. In a wide-ranging interview withCartesian Co-Founder Samuel Miele, Amati explains how Canada builds mindshare in globalmarkets, why a single Netflix series doubled bookings to Alberta, and why authenticity has become the number one driver of travel decisions.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Destination Canada has four mandates, not one: brand leadership, sector advancement, destination development, and collective intelligence. Marketing is only part of the story.

Film tourism works. After a hit Netflix series was filmed in Alberta, Google searches for travel to Alberta and Canada spiked 300 percent and Travel Alberta reported bookingsdoubled.

Canada had a record-setting 2025, including a record summer with $59 billion in tourism sales, despite geopolitical turmoil.

Tourism is Canada's second largest service export. It grows faster than GDP, employs one in ten Canadians, and spans 280,000 small and medium sized businesses.

Spend multipliers matter: for every $1 a Canadian traveller spends on a trip, an American traveller spends $2, an international traveller $4, and a business events traveller $5.

By 2035, Destination Canada forecasts 9.8 percent revenue growth from international travellers, nearly double the 5.3 percent forecast from US travellers, both inflation-adjusted.

More than 60 percent of highly engaged travellers say authenticity is the number one thing they look for in a destination.

Who is Joe Amati and what does Destination Canada actually do?

Joe Amati leads Global Market and Brand Intelligence at Destination Canada, the federalCrown corporation responsible for growing Canada's tourism economy. His team's job is tounder stand everything there is to know about the traveller to Canada: who they are, what they value, and what is in their hearts and minds.

The biggest myth Amati wants to bust is that Destination Canada is only a marketing organization. It runs on four mandates:

1. Brand leadership. Building and curating what Canada means at home and abroad.
2. Sector advancement. Working with airlines on seat capacity and with hotels and their investors on where demand is heading.
3. Destination development. Knitting experiences into connected tourism corridors built around cycling, food, and Indigenous culture.
4. Collective intelligence. Curating trusted data that every partner can act on, fromDestination Ontario to Tourism Kelowna to Banff Lake Louise.

"If we're all singing from that same song sheet, we can build a much stronger Canadian tourism."JOE AMATI, DESTINATION CANADA

What is Canada's tourism brand?

Amati calls it a multi-billion dollar question. Canada spans the Rockies, the East Coast, cosmopolitan Toronto and Montreal, and the old world flair of Quebec City. No single landscape unites it.

What unites it, the research shows, is the people. Destination Canada frames the brand as open hearts, open minds, open spaces: physically open cities and landscapes, a welcoming culture, and one of the most multicultural societies on earth. Within a few blocks of downtown Toronto you can walk from Korea town to Little Italy to Little Portugal. During theFIFA World Cup matches hosted in Toronto and Vancouver, rival fans marched and celebrated together in the streets.

The lesson for hospitality brands: when the product is diverse, the brand lives in the feeling guests leave with, not the asset list.

Does film tourism actually drive bookings?

Yes, and the numbers are striking. The interview covered Visit Scotland's Outlander effect, where visits across comparable filming sites rose from 1.47 million in 2014 to 3.2 million by2020, with Doune Castle up 367 percent.

Canada has its own proof point. Destination Canada partnered with Netflix on a SouthKorean series filmed in Alberta. The results, per Amati:

The show hit number one in 15 of the countries where it aired.

Google searches for travel to Alberta and Canada spiked 300 percent shortly after release.

Travel Alberta reported bookings doubled, not just interest. Bookings.

A microsite showcasing Alberta filming locations drew more traffic than Travel Alberta's main website.

"Culture has a big role in inspiring people's actions. People are typically inspired by music, by sports, by film and television, because that's where they're spending time and attention."JOE AMATI, DESTINATION CANADA

Film builds love for a place before the viewer is ever in market for a trip. It is the ultimate soft sell, and it converts.

How does Destination Canada segment travellers?

Not by income. Destination Canada targets what it calls the highly engaged guest, a values-based segmentation built on what travellers care about rather than what they earn.

"It's not what's on the front of their hockey card, which is all the critical player stats. It's what's on the back of the hockey card, which is their story, what makes them uniquely human."JOE AMATI, DESTINATION CANADA

Highly engaged guests are worth the focus because they disperse beyond core city centres,travel in the off season, and keep travelling through economic shocks. And the single biggestthing they want is authenticity. More than 60 percent rank it as the number one driver of their travel decisions. "In a world that is so filtered, so fake, you've got AI, you've gothallucinations and everything, people just want something real," Amati says.

At Cartesian, we see the same pattern across our hotel, restaurant, attraction, and winery clients: campaigns built on real people, real places, and real experiences outperformpolished sameness on every booking metric that matters.

How big is tourism to Canada's economy?

The interview surfaced numbers every hospitality investor and operator should know:

International visitation is the priority because it is a service export: new money entering the economy rather than the same dollar circulating. And the data flywheel behind thosedecisions is real. The Canadian Tourism Data Collective holds more than 200 data sets and four billion rows of data, and Destination Canada's Tourism Scapes product profiles 5,000communities across Canada for tourism health and hotel investment potential. AtRendezvous Canada in Toronto this May, over 500 tourism buyers conducted more than$100 million in business.

Why brand strength attracts investment, not just visitors

Amati closed with the insight that should reframe how every destination and hospitality group budgets its marketing: brand is an investment thesis. Global research shows a onepoint increase in a nation's brand love correlates with a 6 percent increase in foreign directinvestment and a 7 percent lift in immigration and employment.

"We can't control the economy. What we influence is Canada's brand. The stronger the brand, the stronger position you have in those conversations."JOE AMATI, DESTINATION CANADA

That is the same equation we apply at Cartesian, just at property scale. A hotel, restaurant, attraction, or winery with a strong brand does not just win more bookings. It wins betterrates, better partners, and better capital. Brand is not the soft stuff. It is the balance sheet you cannot see.

Watch and read the full interview

This conversation is part of The Cartesian Chronicles' ongoing interview series with the leaders shaping travel and hospitality, alongside Ontario Tourism Minister Stan Cho, TIAOPresident Andrew Siegw art, and Niagara Parks CEO David Adames.

Cartesian is an integrated marketing agency working exclusively in travel and hospitality. If you want your property's brand working as hard as Canada's, from cinematic content to performance campaigns measured in bookings, talk to us at thatscartesian.com/contact.

FAQ

What is Destination Canada? Destination Canada is the federal Crown corporation responsible for growing Canada's tourism economy. It operates four mandates: brand leadership, sector advancement (airlines and hotels), destination development, and collective intelligence (shared tourism data).

‍What is Canada's tourism brand? Canada's tourism brand is built around its people, summarized as open hearts, open minds, open spaces. Destination Canada's research shows the country's welcoming, multicultural character, not any single landscape, is what unites the brand.

‍Does film tourism increase travel bookings? Yes. After a Netflix series was filmed in Alberta, Google searches for travel to Alberta andCanada rose 300 percent and Travel Alberta reported bookings doubled. Globally,Outlander filming sites in Scotland saw visits climb from 1.47 million in 2014 to 3.2 million by2020.

‍How much do international travellers spend in Canada compared to domestic travellers? For the same trip, if a Canadian traveller spends $1, an American traveller spends about $ overseas international traveller about $4, and a business events traveller about $5.International visitors generate roughly one quarter of Canada's tourism revenue and countas a service export.

‍How important is tourism to Canada's economy? Tourism is Canada's second largest service export, grows faster than national GDP, employs one in ten Canadians, and includes about 280,000 small and medium sized businesses.Summer 2025 set a record with $59 billion in tourism sales.

‍What do travellers want most from a destination in 2026? Authenticity. More than 60 percent of highly engaged travellers say authenticity is the number one thing they look for, ahead of price or amenities.