Vaughan Summer Lineup

Through feedback with Vaughan’s tourism stakeholders, it was identified that organizations wanted an opportunity to not just collaborate with other local tourism businesses, but to also showcase and present what offerings they were providing throughout the 2024 to drive partnership and collaboration. In response, Tourism Vaughan partnered with the Vaughan International Film Festival (VFF) to launch a new, free event titled Vaughan’s Summer Lineup. The objective was to give tourism stakeholders the ability to connect with the broader tourism ecosystem, including other attractions, festivals and events to drive partnership and collaboration, alongside the added benefit of speaking directly to media 

The inaugural event took place on March 21, 2024 with over 40 guests in attendance, including tourism stakeholders, business owners and media. Ten tourism organizations and events were invited to participate with a vendor booth at the event as well as present to other stakeholders and the media. Stakeholders ranged from major tourist attractions such as Canada’s Wonderland and LEGOLAND Discovery Centre to community-based organizations like the Dance Together Festival and the Vaughan Latin Festival. 

The presenting tourism stakeholders included the following: 

• Assembly Park 

• Canada’s Wonderland 

• City of Vaughan, Recreation Services 

• Dance Together Project 

• Fuerza Latina Canada 

• LEGOLAND Discovery Centre 

• McMichael Canadian Art Collection 

• The Chef Upstairs 

• Vaughan Con 

• Vaughan International Film Festival 

• Vaughan International Music Festival 

Since the Vaughan Summer Lineup, the following collaborations have been launched: 

1. LEGOLAND Discovery Centre secured a partnership with Aloft Vaughan Mills for its Play Unstoppable event in April 2024. 

1. LEGOLAND Discovery Centre secured exhibiting space at the Vaughan Latin Festival that took place in July 2024. 

1. Vaughan Mills and LEGOLAND Discovery Centre partnered together for the Destination Vaughan Mills campaign running between July – August 2024. 

1. The location was secured for inaugural Vaughan Appetit festival happening in September 2024 between the Toronto Festival of Beer and Assembly Park (QuadReal). 

1. For the first time, the Dance Together Festival participated in the City of Vaughan’s Vaughan Celebrates Canada Day festival in July, and will be performing at the Vaughan International Music Festival in August 2024. 

1. The Chef Upstairs secured a new partnership with Vin Bon for Vaughan Culture Days in September 2024. 

As this was the first time the event occurred, effectively communicating to businesses what the purpose of this was took some time. We haven’t seen an opportunity like this in Vaughan before, so a lot of coaching and direct outreach was required to get participation and engagement from our stakeholders. We provided more detailed one-pagers, agendas and invite lists so that businesses could get a better understanding of the free opportunity. 

It was a unique way of giving multiple tourism stakeholders the opportunity to showcase their offerings and what makes them special to other businesses (for collaboration) and to media (for promotion). While destination management organizations often hold Annual General Meetings or networking events, this was truly a combination of both. This out-of-the-box thinking provided our stakeholders the free opportunity to receive media attention and partnership prospects.