Rogers Pass National Historic Site

Reimagining the visitor experience

The Challenge

I was tasked with facilitating a complete visitor experience for Rogers Pass National Historic Site, one of Canada’s most-visited historic sites. The site’s breathtaking terrain, with its tremendous snowfall and regular road closures, presented unique logistical challenges. Adding to the complexity, there was very little recent audience research available to guide the process.

The Approach

To tackle this project, I began with a comprehensive site visit, putting on my “visitor goggles” to experience the place first-hand. I conducted interviews with key staff members and facilitated a two-day workshop with staff and tourism partners to identify key themes and challenges. Importantly, I also engaged with First Nations communities to ensure their perspectives and stories were included.

Synthesizing all the input, I developed actionable recommendations and returned for two additional days of collaborative work with the site team. My efforts focused on smoothing and clarifying the arrival experience, finding fresh ways to better connect visitors with the site’s history, and updating outdated themes to resonate with today’s diverse audiences.

Lessons Learned

This project reinforced the importance of understanding radically different audience types, each with distinct needs and interests. Rogers Pass attracts highway travellers sheltering from road closures, keen summer tourist families, foreign bus tourists, and highway travellers curious but completely unfamiliar with the site’s rich history. Balancing these diverse needs required creativity, empathy, and a visitor-centred approach to design solutions that would engage everyone.