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A Tourism Infusion is a weekend where a community invites visitors to come spend time there.
What makes an infusion is a focus on a few essential components:
The visitors come on their own dime, find their own accommodations, eat at local restaurants, shop at local stores, and explore at their own pace. The organizers one informal gathering, a group photo, so that everyone who came can see how many other people came too.
That is the whole event.
What makes it different from "tourism" in the ordinary sense is the framing. An Infusion is a personal invitation. It says, out loud and on the record, that visitors are wanted, that the community is ready for them, and that the people who already live there will help them figure out where to eat and what to do. It is a deliberate act of welcome.
What makes it different from a festival is that it is unprogrammed. Visitors are not herded between scheduled activities. There are no headlining acts. There is no admission. The weekend belongs to the visitors, and the role of the organizers is to make sure the local economy is open, ready, and visible.
The Infusion model has two possible tracks:
The tourism track - While we started this whole thing as a personal invitation to support a community likely to be hit hard by economic tariffs, it is fundamentally about visitors coming for a weekend, spending money, and going home with a story to tell. This foundation is what every Infusion includes, but could help accomplish other goals.
The healthcare track is an optional add-on. It treats the weekend as a recruiting opportunity for healthcare workers thinking about relocating. It includes hospital tours, conversations with with healthcare employers, and information about how to apply for jobs and visas. It works because healthcare workers are in shortage in most Canadian communities, and because a weekend visit is a low-stakes way to find out whether a place feels like home.
You can run a tourism-only Infusion. You can run one that includes the healthcare track. This handbook covers both.
Une Tourism Infusion est un week-end durant lequel une communauté invite des visiteurs à venir y passer du temps.
Ce qui caractérise une infusion, c’est l’accent mis sur quelques éléments essentiels :