Harvey Sawler | Biography

To the Point

Harvey is a leading Canadian tourism consultant and an emerging Canadian author.

In Detail

Harvey has thirty-nine years of private and public sector experience in tourism and parks management, tourism product development, marketing, brand development, strategic planning, community development, arts and entertainment management, journalism, creative and business writing , consulting and public speaking.

Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, he has been fortunate to spend two thirds of his life in Atlantic Canada, from where his intermingled vocations and relentless travels have provided him with countless fascinating people and backdrops, which serve in the pursuit of his final career - journaling and creating stories. His office is virtual - coffee shops, pubs, highways, airports, hotels, telephones and computers.

Since forming Forerunner Creative and Tourism Strategies Ltd. in 1998, he has been in demand creating tourism strategies and brands and conducting community-based as well as corporate facilitations from Alberta to Northern Labrador. Since 2000, he has written ten books, including Frank McKenna: Beyond Politics, Twenty-First Century Irvings, Unforgettable Atlantic Canada and On the Road With Dutch Mason and he is in constant pursuit of new ideas and subjects.

Harvey began his career as a reporter, photographer and junior editor, interviewing and writing about scores of personalities. He has covered news stories as diverse as Moncton's horrific double police murder and the 1974 Trudeau election campaign train. He comes from an era during which he filed stories via cast-iron teletype machines and pages were still composed in hot lead type; yet he has led strategic plans toward e-communications and e-commerce for various Atlantic tourism interests.

He has worked in senior management roles and in direct consultative assistance to a wide range of clients and organizations. He worked as Director of Public Relations and Marketing for Confederation Centre of the Arts and The Charlottetown Festival; Director of Sales and Marketing for Rodd Inns, Hotels and Resorts; Director of Marketing for Perfection Foods; Director of Marketing for Prince Edward Island Tourism; and Executive Director for the New Brunswick Provincial Tourism Secretariat. He spent ten years on the executive of the Tourism Industry Association of Prince Edward Island (TIAPEI), including a period as its president, chaired a series of marketing committees for the Atlantic Canada Tourism Partnership (ACTP) and led Prince Edward Island’s tourism industry efforts on Sea Sell promotions to cities on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard.

He is widely associated with spearheading the highly-successful development and marketing thrust of New Brunswick tourism throughout the 1990's. In this 'tourism laboratory', he was instrumental in the creation of Day Adventures, New Brunswick’s innovative Point-of Sale initiative, as well as in the formation and launch of the Bay of Fundy tourism partnership, where the ground-breaking formula for a program called Total Marketing Readiness (TMR) was unearthed. Through Forerunner Creative, he worked under contract as Senior Tourism Consultant to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA). Here he chaired ACOA's agency-wide Tourism Working Group for six years running and conceived of several initiatives, including: Signature Attractions of Atlantic Canada, The Gros Morne Institute of Sustainable Tourism and The Bouctouche Lessons Learned Program on Sustainable Tourism Communities. In 2008, he returned as the consultant for ACOA’s Atlantic-wide tourism strategy renewal effort. Harvey is proud to have worked as a leading protagonist for the advancement of Acadian tourism products; he has also consulted for national Francophone tourism interests in the development of a strategy linked to the Canadian Tourism Commission and the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. He has been instrumental in leading a string of strategic planning efforts and coordinating countless tourism studies for clients in Alberta, Ontario and across Atlantic Canada.

He is a frequent speaker and facilitator to tourism organizations on a variety of subjects, particularly his focus on product life cycles, the use of The Value Equation, 'The New Science of Tourism Product Development' and 'The Ten Essentials of Successful Travel Products.'

Harvey’s other non-fiction works include: The Beer Bandit Caper, Last Canadian Beer – The Moosehead Story and Portrait of Camelot, a pictorial/biographical book focusing on the work of the first White House photographer, Cecil Stoughton, with presidential historian Richard Reeves (Abrams of New York), celebrating the 50th anniversary of the election and inauguaration of President John F. Kennedy. His novels include: The Penguin Man, One Single Hour and Saving Mrs. Kennedy.

He lives with his partner Charlotte Stewart at her family heritage property at Bellevue Cove, Prince Edward Island. He has two daughters and two grandchildren, all of who live in Fredericton.

Recent Clients and Projects

Atlantic Canada Tourism Partnership (ACTP)
Tourism Industry Association of P.E.I.
Facilitated a multi-party two-day workshop aimed at establishing the groundwork for renewal of one of Canada’s most longstanding and leading collaborative economic development partnerships.

The ACOA Tourism Strategy and the Strategy Toolbox
Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency – Tourism Atlantic Division
Facilitated an extensive 1-year, agency-wide exercise in 2008 resulting in the development of a new strategic tourism plan for ACOA. The assignment was followed by a commission to create a toolbox of resources designed to assist agency account managers in mobilizing the strategy.

The Prince Edward Island Strategy for Tourism Competitiveness: 2005 – 2010
Prince Edward Island Tourism Advisory Council
Harvey facilitated planning and authored the PEI Tourism Advisory Council’s current strategic plan.

Visitor Experience Renewal
Banff National Park
Harvey has completed an extensive visitor experience renewal process at Banff National Park – Canada’s first and by far most-visited national park. As one result, Banff now has a newly customized visitor experience development formula.

New Product Development
The Hopewell Rocks
Harvey worked with the management of the Hopewell Rocks to identify new product development opportunities for New Brunswick’s premier tourism attraction. Scope of work includes integrating comprehensive analysis of current and prospective visitors with emerging tourism and visitation trends and the New Brunswick tourism industry’s strategic focus.

Tukisinnik – “To Understand” – A Special Community Forum on Research in Nunatsiavut
Government of Nunatsiavut/Torngat Mountains National Park Preserve
Facilitated and reported on the first-ever forum combining polar-region researchers and the Inuit of Northern Labrador. The forum resulted in a new sense of relationships and understanding between polar researchers and the people of Nunatsiavut and identified research as a meaningful economic growth sector for the region.

Atlantic Canada Trails Association (ACT) Strategy
Tourism Atlantic – Atlantic Canada Trails Association
Facilitated an association strategic planning exercise resulting in a tangible, well-embraced plan for the advancement of ACT.

The Inner Journeys Program
Tourism New Brunswick
The invention of a new themed, branded packaging and experiential product development program for the New Brunswick tourism industry.

Cape Enrage Lighthouse Experiential Revitalization
Cape Enrage Lighthouse
Harvey led a consulting team that completed a major revitalization plan for one of New Brunswick’s most significant natural and historical tourism assets. The plan encompassed experiential offerings, positioning in the marketplace and capital project and operating estimates. With the plan, Cape Enrage was successful in securing major funding support from the provincial government and ACOA.

Upper Bay of Fundy: Strategic and Action Plans for a UNESCO World Biosphere Destination Business Development
Enterprise Fundy and the Tourism Industry Association of New Brunswick
Harvey led a multi-party committee involving New Brunswick’s tourism industry, Parks Canada, local communities and the Upper Fundy UNESCO Biosphere committee in the development of a major strategic plan for business development within and surrounding the designated biosphere zone.

Bird Cove Area Destination Development Plan
Bird Cove Tourism Development Steering Committee
Working with a multi-stakeholder regional, provincial and federal steering committee, Harvey assessed changing visitor travel patterns to Labrador’s Great Northern Peninsula and created a development plan to grow tourism visitations and economic impact for the Bird Cove region of the peninsula.

Le Pays de la Sagouine New Master Plan
Le Pays de la Sagouine
Harvey was retained by Le Pays de la Saqouine and the provincial government to complete a comprehensive assessment of the experiential offering (product) and brand offer of one of Atlantic Canada’s most important Acadian cultural institutions and tourism attractions.

Tourism Strategic Plan
Tourism Nunatsiavut / Parks Canada
Harvey worked with federal, provincial and regional stakeholders to create a comprehensive inaugural tourism strategy for the research, development, branding and marketing of the new Inuit self-government region of Nunatsiavut in Labrador which includes the phenomenal Torngat Mountains National Park.

Rivers & Bays Product and Market Readiness Strategy for Northern New Brunswick
Enterprise Restigouche
Harvey led a comprehensive study to strategically align and enhance visitor experiences in Northern New Brunswick and effectively brand these experiences to achieve a critical mass of quality product offerings to achieve meaningful growth in tourism.

Trout River Pond Tourism Development
Parks Canada
Harvey led research and assessments for the development of concepts for new tourism-based businesses in the Trout River Pond region of Newfoundland. The goal of the project was to identify tourism destination generators that would contribute to the economic development of the community of Trout River. Scope of work included detailed financial pro forma encompassing capital start-up costs, revenues and operating costs.

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