Funding Opportunities to Help Tourism Employers Hire and Innovate
TRU House Of Learning Library
Mary Putnam
Have an idea for growing your business, bringing new talent onto your team, or tackling a project that keeps getting pushed down the priority list?
Funding programs can make it easier for tourism and hospitality employers to hire students and young people, develop future talent, and collaborate with post-secondary institutions on research and innovation.
Here are three programs Kamloops tourism employers should have on their radar—and examples of how organizations are already putting these opportunities to work.
Propel: Turn a Student Placement into a Talent Strategy
The Propel Student Work Placement Program was created specifically for Canada's tourism and hospitality sector. Delivered by Tourism HR Canada and funded by the Government of Canada, Propel helps employers hire post-secondary students for paid work-integrated learning placements, including co-op and internships. Eligible employers can currently receive a wage subsidy covering 50% of a student's gross wages, up to $5,000 per placement. Students do not have to be studying tourism. Depending on the position and program requirements, this creates opportunities to bring students with backgrounds in areas such as business, marketing, technology, communications, sustainability, and other disciplines into tourism organizations.
What does success look like?
Tourism employers across Canada are already using Propel in creative ways.
“We greatly appreciate the continued support we have received from the Propel Student Work Placement Program over the years. The funding has allowed us to provide meaningful opportunities to students such as Caitlyn, Ikaros, and David, who each brought valuable skills, fresh perspectives, and a positive impact to our team while gaining hands on experience within the hospitality industry”. - Katie Wolowyk, Hospitality & Operations Coordinator at Château Okanagan
Additionally, a BC-based Roadside Hospitality, for example, has used student work placements and highlighted the fresh perspectives and energy students can bring into an organization. At Carmen's Group, a hospitality company operating event venues, a boutique hotel, a restaurant, and catering operations, student placements have become another way to engage emerging talent. 9 Mile Legacy Brewing in Saskatoon has also participated in Propel, with its leadership highlighting not only the student's learning but the professional development that mentoring a student can create for existing staff.
The broader results are encouraging. In Tourism HR Canada's employer feedback, 100% of respondents reported that their student placement benefited their company, and nearly 85% said they would consider hiring their student for a longer-term position. This means a co-op placement doesn't have to be viewed simply as four months of additional help. It can be an opportunity to test new ideas, develop supervisors and mentors within your organization, and identify potential future employees.
Think about: Is there a project or role in your organization that could become a student placement—and potentially develop into your next great hire?
Canada Summer Jobs: Build Your Team for the Busy Season
Canada Summer Jobs provides wage subsidies to help employers create quality summer employment opportunities for youth aged 15–30.
For tourism employers, this can be particularly valuable when staffing needs increase during the busy summer season. Positions can also go beyond traditional frontline roles. Employers can consider where additional capacity could make a difference—from visitor services and recreation to marketing, events, administration, and community programming.
What does success look like?
Canada Summer Jobs supported more than 27,450 employers and 75,000 jobs across Canada in 2025. In surveys of participating employers, 96% reported being satisfied with their experience and 99% reported seeing an improvement in participants' employment-related skills. For a tourism business, that could mean using funding to bring someone onto the team during the busiest months while simultaneously giving a young person meaningful experience and exposure to the industry.
Think about: What could your organization accomplish next summer with an additional team member?
Mitacs Accelerate: Turn a Business Challenge into a Research Project
Not every business challenge requires another employee. Sometimes you need dedicated expertise to investigate a problem, explore an opportunity, or test a new idea. That's where Mitacs Accelerate can offer a different type of partnership. Mitacs Accelerate connects organizations with post-secondary researchers to work together on applied research and innovation projects. Under the standard funding model, a partner contribution starting at $7,500 generates a $15,000 research award for a four- or six-month internship, with at least $10,000 going toward the researcher's stipend or salary.
For tourism organizations, potential projects could explore areas such as:
- visitor experience and destination development;
- workforce attraction and retention;
- technology and AI adoption;
- sustainability;
- market and consumer research;
- operational efficiencies; or
- development and evaluation of new products and experiences.
What could this look like in tourism?
Imagine a tourism business wanting to better understand why visitors choose one experience over another, an organization exploring how AI could improve its operations, or a destination partner wanting to understand workforce retention. Rather than trying to answer the question internally, the organization could work with a post-secondary researcher to turn the challenge into a structured research project. The result is different from simply hiring a student: the organization gains dedicated research capacity, while the researcher works on a real industry challenge. Mitacs Accelerate accepts applications year-round, making it especially useful when a research or innovation opportunity emerges outside a traditional funding cycle.
Think about: What question about your business have you wanted to answer but haven’t had the time, data, or expertise to investigate?
Start with the Opportunity, Not the Funding Program
You don't need to know which funding program fits before reaching out.
Start instead with the opportunity:
- We need another person on our team next summer.
- We have a project that would be perfect for a student.
- We have a business challenge we'd like someone to research.
From there, Thompson Rivers University's Career and Experiential Learning team can help explore whether there is an opportunity to connect your organization with students, work-integrated learning, or other university resources.
Building stronger connections between employers and students benefits more than individual organizations. It helps students build meaningful careers, gives employers access to emerging talent and new ideas, and strengthens the tourism workforce right here in our community.
Email:
Phone: 250-371-5627
