Ontario Tourism’s Sector‑Led Strategy: Cartesian’s Exclusive Interview with TIAO President Andrew Siegwart

Ontario’s tourism playbook is no longer a government‑only project; the industry has written its own blueprint. In an exclusive Cartesian interview, Tourism Industry Association of Ontario (TIAO) President and CEO Andrew Siegwart sits down with co‑founder Samuel Miele to unpack “Forward Motion,” a five‑year, sector‑led strategy to grow visitation, attract investment, and build a stronger workforce across Ontario. The full interview video will be embedded in this post so tourism leaders, DMOs, RTOs, and operators can hear the conversation first‑hand.

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Why TIAO built its own tourism strategy

Ontario had not seen a provincial tourism sector strategy since around 2016, even as the industry weathered a pandemic, shifting tariffs, and rapid changes in visitor behavior. Siegwart explains that a new strategy was “desperately needed,” so TIAO chose not to wait for government and instead led a grassroots process with operators across the province. Built from “boots on the ground” intel, the five‑year strategy identifies core problems and proposes solutions across six pillars, including transportation, market development, investment attraction, sustainability, and people.

Rather than a document written in a boardroom, the strategy was developed in the field while shocks like tariff disputes were unfolding, which allowed TIAO to warn government early and help shape responses such as Destination Ontario’s West End campaign. Siegwart frames the playbook as Ontario’s tourism strategy, with TIAO as facilitator, not sole owner.

How the new tourism playbook works

The Forward Motion strategy is more than a vision piece; it comes with structure, roles, and a roadmap. Siegwart notes that TIAO has mapped what should happen in years one through five across its six pillars, making it easier to recruit partners and move from big ideas to execution.

Key design features include:

Open participation: Strategic working groups will tackle each pillar, drawing in subject‑matter experts from DMOs, RTOs, sector organizations, municipalities, and operators, whether or not they are TIAO members.
Alignment council: A cross‑industry council will guide the working groups, prioritize initiatives, and define which KPIs and data matter most, such as sales, job numbers, and tax impacts.
Autonomy from government: The strategy is industry‑led and not constructed as a reporting mechanism to any one ministry; instead it is built to serve visitors and employers first, while giving government a coherent, sector‑backed roadmap to respond to.

This model positions TIAO as a convener and catalyst, helping the ecosystem pull in the same direction without waiting for a top‑down directive.

TIAO’s role in Ontario’s tourism ecosystem

In the interview, Siegwart calls Ontario “blessed” to have a dense tourism ecosystem that ranges from hyper‑local DMOs to sector‑specific organizations. DMOs operate at the community level, focusing on destination management and marketing for specific cities and towns, while RTOs work at a regional layer to coordinate cluster programs and solve local economic issues with partners.

Sector organizations, such as culinary, hotel, or agritourism associations, act as deep product experts, and increasingly municipalities are active tourism players as they collect and deploy Municipal Accommodation Tax (MAT) revenues. TIAO’s role is to represent and work with all of these players, amplify their perspectives at the provincial level, and take the lead on universal issues such as workforce, economic conditions, market growth, and investment attraction.

Investment, MAT reform, and a new approach to funding

Siegwart argues that investment attraction cannot depend only on large one‑off government incentives or grants. Instead, TIAO is advancing a proposal for a refundable tax credit of roughly 10–20% of eligible project costs, up to a cap, to encourage private‑sector tourism businesses to build, expand, or green their products.

Crucially, the proposal brings other partners into the mix:

Municipalities can contribute portions of their MAT revenues, which now total roughly $250 million annually across more than 80 communities.
DMOs and sector organizations can add both dollars and intellectual capital, helping design stronger projects and de‑risking investment.

The MAT framework itself is also under scrutiny. The regulation was originally envisioned as a partnership model where DMOs and municipalities share funds and jointly advance visitor economy priorities, with the average split landing around 50/50. However, Siegwart notes that regulations are ambiguous on issues like how funds must be used, and in some places governance has tilted toward municipalities exerting more control over spending decisions.

TIAO is calling for clearer rules of engagement to preserve separate accountability and autonomy for tourism entities, ensure MAT dollars go to visitor‑economy infrastructure and management, and keep visitors, businesses, and residents all seeing value from the tax.

Visitation, diversification, and growth targets

The strategy sets a clear growth ambition: 4% annual visitor‑spend growth, supported by a more diversified visitor mix. Today, the domestic spender within Ontario is still the largest tourism customer, and TIAO wants to continue cultivating local travel and staycations.

At the same time, Siegwart stresses:

More Canadians from other provinces should be choosing Ontario for their trips.
American visitors already drive about 20% of annual tourism spend and need to be reassured and re‑engaged as cross‑border dynamics evolve.
Overseas and US travelers tend to stay longer and spend more, which means their growth has a disproportionate impact on GDP and job creation.

The message to operators is that marketing can no longer focus almost exclusively on the majority customer segment. Businesses must divert more effort and budget toward international, US, and rest‑of‑Canada markets, while continuing domestic work, if they want to reach the sector’s 4% growth target.

Fixing the workforce gap and adding 35,000 jobs

Perhaps the most urgent topic in the interview is workforce. TIAO’s strategy aims to add at least 35,000 tourism jobs by 2030, but Siegwart warns that maintaining the status quo growth rate of 1.5–2% would cause tourism employment to decline, not grow.

The sector is grappling with:

Ongoing labour shortages and fewer international students and temporary foreign workers.
The loss of 57 culinary, tourism, and hospitality programs at Ontario colleges, resulting in thousands fewer students studying and working in the province and fewer graduates entering the talent pipeline.

To counter this, TIAO is pushing several solutions:

Leveraging tourism’s strong tradition of training from within and creating clearer development paths.
Advocating to earmark 5–10% of the Skills Development Fund for tourism skills development and change projects, including modernizing college programs and pausing further suspensions without impact assessment.
Expanding programs that bring in people with barriers to employment and youth, connecting them with training and jobs in tourism businesses of all sizes.
Encouraging employers to improve the overall employment experience, from wages and scheduling to culture and growth opportunities, to make tourism a more attractive long‑term career.

Siegwart frames workforce not as an isolated HR issue but as a central pillar of competitiveness: without enough skilled, motivated people, even the best marketing and infrastructure cannot deliver on visitor expectations.

Why this conversation matters for Ontario tourism leaders

This Cartesian interview with Andrew Siegwart arrives just as TIAO’s Forward Motion playbook is beginning to move from paper to implementation. With a sector‑led strategy, new investment tools on the table, MAT reform under discussion, ambitious growth targets, and a clear workforce agenda, Ontario’s visitor economy is at an inflection point.

For DMOs, RTOs, operators, investors, and policy‑makers, the interview offers a candid, actionable look at how Ontario’s tourism community intends to shape its own future—and what kind of collaboration will be required to get there. Watch the full video to hear the complete discussion and consider where your organization fits in this next chapter for Ontario tourism.