Stewardship & Storytelling: Joanne Wolnik on Community-Led Tourism in Southwest Ontario
Joanne Wolnik, Executive Director of Southwest Ontario Tourism, joins Stephen Ekstrom on Business Class to explore how small-place pride, thoughtful stewardship, and hands-on experiences can transform tourism into a force for local good. Joanne shares her journey from outdoor-recreation student to destination leader (and part-time horse-farm owner), and explains why “your ordinary is somebody else’s extraordinary.”
Listen for practical examples—farm-to-table experiences, artisan woodworkers, and community hosts—that help visitors learn, belong, and take home something that changes their daily lives. Joanne also walks through what stewardship really means (benefit the community, protect the environment, and amplify local voices), and offers tactical advice for DMOs wanting to center residents, business partners, and authentic experiences in their tourism strategy.
Produced by Learn Tourism. Full transcript:
Lessons from Joanne Wolnik on making tourism matter
By Stephen Ekstrom, CEO & Cofounder — Learn Tourism
When tourism benefits a place, the change is often quiet: a neighbor meeting a visitor, a chef sourcing a new ingredient from a nearby farm, or a craftsperson teaching a visitor to build something by hand. On the latest Business Class episode I sat down with Joanne Wolnik, Executive Director of Southwest Ontario Tourism, and came away with a clear throughline: great destinations invest in people first, and the rest follows.
Joanne’s career—rooted in outdoor recreation, destination development, and a hands-on life running a horse farm—brings a pragmatic compassion to this work. She frames stewardship not as a policy checkbox, but as a set of everyday choices: ensure tourism benefits local livelihoods, protect and regenerate the environment that draws visitors, and center local voices so communities decide the kind of tourism they want.
Below are the practical ideas and stories Joanne shared that are worth sharing more widely.
One of Joanne’s mentors taught her to look at everyday local life with fresh eyes. Activities that locals take for granted—harvesting watermelon at a family farm, preparing butter tarts, or building a charcuterie board from locally sourced wood—are the very moments that transform a visitor’s trip into a memory. DMOs should surface and support these hosts: the people who can translate local craft, food, and place into learning experiences.
Example: Alex at River Melons invites visitors to pick, prepare, and share a farm brunch—guests leave with both practical skills and a deeper appreciation for nutrition and local food systems. Dave at Otter Creek Woodworks brings people into the forest to learn about soil, trees, and sustainable sourcing before they build a charcuterie board to take home. These are small, tactile transformations that scale up into big value for both visitor and host.
Joanne’s definition of stewardship is direct: tourism should benefit local communities—not exploit them. That means co-designing experiences with residents, protecting the natural and cultural assets that draw people, and using tourism value to support regeneration and community resilience. It’s a long-game view that requires listening, patience, and real accountability.
Joanne wants destination managers to move from abstract economic metrics to named, tangible impacts: who benefits, how a business makes a living, which family is supported by tourism, and what a visitor takes home that changes their habits. This human-scaled storytelling makes tourism meaningful and easier to champion inside local governments and community groups. It’s the difference between “we support small businesses” and “we helped Susan double farm-gate sales and hire an apprentice.”
Joanne and our team at Learn Tourism agree on two essentials for adult learning in tourism: focus on outcomes (what people should be able to do) and design with empathy (teach on people’s terms). Accessibility is logistical—when and where people can learn—and cognitive—how people prefer to learn. Practical, short modules (microlearning), hands-on application, and clear behavior outcomes are what make training stick.
Joanne shared a charming idea called “Kind Lit”: simple, everyday acts (even passing on a $5 bill to help someone) that reinforce hospitality and care. These gestures matter. They’re the social fabric that turns residents into ambassadors and visitors into repeat guests.
Joanne’s work in Southwest Ontario is a reminder that tourism is first and foremost about relationships: between host and guest, business and community, and people and place. When destinations design around those relationships—when they teach, listen, and protect—tourism becomes more than an industry. It becomes a shared resource that supports livelihoods, culture, and the environment.
Want the short version for your team? I can draft a one-page “pilot plan” based on Joanne’s examples (three micro-modules + one in-person practical + community metrics) that you can share at your next stakeholder meeting. Full transcript of the interview:
—
Stephen Ekstrom
CEO & Cofounder, Learn Tourism