Summer polar bear photography. Seal River Heritage Lodge. Jad Davenport photo.
How do you convince someone that you walk with polar bears, and make it believable, in ten minutes?
That was the challenge in Toronto this spring. Churchill Wild VP of Business Development Jackie Storry, Marketing Manager Maggie Cole, and Travel Trade Relations Specialist Sue Brown spent three days at Rendez-vous Canada (RVC), Canada’s signature international tourism marketplace, fielding 150 appointments between them. Each one ran ten minutes and offered a chance to turn a stranger from Mexico, Italy, Japan, Brazil and beyond into a partner who could sell the Arctic to clients half a world away.
More than 500 five-star TripAdvisor reviews help. So do accolades from National Geographic. But when you sit down across from a travel professional who has never heard that you can see polar bears during the summer, let alone walk with them, you still have to be convincing. Fast.
The Ten-Minute Pitch
Churchill Wild Marketing Manager Maggie Cole at RVC.
Ask Maggie Cole to sell Churchill Wild in the time it takes to boil a kettle, and she doesn’t blink. Below is the elevator speech that worked appointment after appointment:
“Most of the polar bear operators work in a small area around Churchill. There are about four or five main ones. We’re the only operator that owns and operates remote Arctic luxury ecolodges along the coast. We have three of them.
That’s the first thing that makes us unique. The second is our season. Most people believe you can only see polar bears in October and November. Not true. The bears come off the ice around the end of June and roam this coastline until they head back out at the end of November. Because our lodges sit right on that coast, directly on what we call the polar bear highway, you can see just as many polar bears in the summer as you can in the fall.
The third thing, and the big one, is that we’re a walking safari. Completely at ground level. We pioneered polar bear walking safaris in 1993 and are really the only company in the world that specializes in what we do. Think of it as an African walking safari, but in Canada, with polar bears.
It’s a full-week experience, minimum seven days, up to fourteen. Yes, we’re a higher price point, but it’s all-inclusive: flights from Winnipeg, all your accommodation, all your food and alcohol, your winter or rain gear, and every activity and excursion. You get yourself to Winnipeg. We cover everything else.
And it’s safe. Three guides on every walk, a strict safety protocol built over three decades, and a family who grew up on the Hudson Bay coast learning polar bear behaviour. If a bear is calm, we approach. If it’s agitated, we let it be. We’ve never had an issue since we started.”
Did it land? “What we do is so special and unique that it just sells itself,” said Maggie.
The numbers back her up. Of the 150 appointments, only about 20 per cent weren’t a fit, and that was generally because of a buyer’s particular clientele, not a lack of interest. “Everyone else loved what we offered and wants to follow up.”
A Triple Tiara on the Marketplace Floor
Churchill Wild’s Triple Tiara at Rendez-vous CANADA! L to R: Marketing Manager Maggie Cole, VP of Business Development Jackie Storry, and Travel Trade Relations Specialist Sue Brown.
Manitoba was well represented in Toronto, and so was the competition, but Churchill Wild, with three people working the floor, was the busiest among the operators at the show.
Each woman brought a different strength, and together they covered the whole funnel.
Maggie Cole handled the product story: the ecolodges, the safaris, the new Photography Masterclass directed by National Geographic photographer Jad Davenport, the polar bears, the beluga whales (the highest concentration in the world, with some 55,000 in Hudson Bay each summer), the wolves, black bears, moose, the mass bird migrations.
Jackie Storry, who has been attending RVC for well over a decade going back to her days with Lakeview Hotels & Resorts, worked the strategic relationships, meeting every Destination Canada market representative on site, from the UK and Germany to the US, Japan, and France.
She also came home with a tip that could reshape how the company markets itself. The European luxury market increasingly wants something tangible. One French rep showed her a printed coffee-table book on Canada’s rail journeys, complete with QR codes.
“People want something they can hold,” said Jackie, “because there’s so much that’s not real out there. They want to know it’s not AI.” For a company whose whole proposition rests on authenticity, that’s a signal worth acting on.
Churchill Wild VP of Business Development (left) and Travel Trade Relations Specialist Sue Brown at RVC.
Sue Brown, who deals with the company’s operators day in and day out, spent most of her meetings reconnecting with existing partners, reassuring them, finding out what they need, and managing the happy problem of being booked solid. “Some of them are like, oh, you’re full already this year, you’re half full next year, you’re releasing 2028. Okay, we’d better get on this.”
For Sue, it’s all relationships. When a German operator worried about a returning client, she reassured him on the spot. “We value that relationship,” she said. “If they want to come back to you, we’ll offer you the operator rate.” She also flagged momentum from new corners: a first booking from A.H. Travel in China, strong Mexican interest through partners like Evergreen Adventures, and a German operator, Klaus of Tour Canada, eager to have Churchill Wild review his website.
Where the World is Coming From
If RVC 2026 had a headline, it was the shift in the map. The traditional powerhouse, the United States, has softened, and new markets are surging to fill the gap.
“We’re seeing a huge increase from Mexico and Italy,” said Maggie, “and Brazil too.” Jackie saw the same thing, including a Brazilian operator who left wanting contracted rates, training for his team, and a relationship for the fifteen advisors beneath him. Mexico in particular is heating up.
Travel advisor Jesús MartÃnez of Dream Destinations Mexico is heading north this summer on a familiarization trip, the Arctic Discovery out of Nanuk, July 29 to August 6, to film a long-form documentary he’ll screen back home. With polar bears, beluga whales, black bears, and the chance of wolves, it’s the perfect trip to put in front of a Mexican audience.
There’s a longer game here too. As Jackie explained, travel trade is a slow build. The first year is an introduction. The second builds the relationship and the contracts. It’s the third year when bookings really start flowing through to advisors and consumers.
Churchill Wild’s edge is that it’s already releasing 2028 rates, further ahead than almost anyone else in the room, which buyers love. Add in the company’s direct-booking numbers, around 70 per cent of bookings come direct, with a high repeat-guest rate, and the luxury trade takes notice.
The relationships were cemented the way they always are, after hours. The team took in the welcome reception atop the CN Tower, a Travel Manitoba dinner for the full provincial crew, and the closing party at the Royal Ontario Museum, where the whole museum opened for entertainers, local food, and a dance floor.
Manitoba also hosted the opening-day lunch, with Travel Manitoba’s Angela Cassie and VP of Marketing Cody Chomiak showcasing the province, and Churchill Wild featured prominently in the two-minute video reel of everything there is to see in Manitoba.
About Rendez-vous Canada
Rendez-vous Canada is the country’s largest international tourism marketplace, co-produced by Destination Canada, the national tourism Crown corporation, and the Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC), the national private-sector advocate for an industry that generated $133 billion in visitor spending in 2025. For nearly 50 years, RVC has connected qualified international travel buyers with Canadian tourism sellers from all 13 provinces and territories.
This year’s event ran May 26 to 29 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, drawing a record turnout: more than 1,600 travel innovators, over 580 Canadian seller organizations, and some 400 qualified buyers and media from Destination Canada’s key markets, with a projected $100 million in sales.
Next year marks a milestone. Rendez-vous Canada 2027 heads to Calgary for the 50th anniversary of Canada’s largest international tourism marketplace. Hosted by Travel Alberta in partnership with Tourism Calgary, Destination Canada, and the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, next year’s event takes place from April 28 to May 1, 2027. Learn more at rendezvouscanada.ca.
For Churchill Wild, the takeaway from Toronto was simple. Three people, 150 ten-minute conversations, and a story that, told well, still stops a room. You really can walk with polar bears. And after RVC 2026…
A lot more of the world believes it.
