During the early days of the COVID-19, Tourisme Côte-Nord gained traction among Quebeckers as urbanites sought out summer-road-trip destinations that were closer to home. This year, with many Canadians avoiding U.S. travel because of tariff threats from President Donald Trump, the regional travel group feels conditions are ripe for another increase in visitors.

With the late-March launch of a set of promotional videos, the region that hugs the southern border and the southwest edge of Labrador is expanding on a promotional platform, created in collaboration with Montreal-based agency La Bande, that has been a factor in bringing record tourist to the area in recent summers.

“Considering that all the Canadians won’t go to the States, and they will try to find original destinations, and there’s a lot of word of mouth, it’s like a train that we pushed out, and now it’s almost rolling on its own,” François Poulin, strategic planner for Tourisme Côte-Nord, tells strategy.

The area certainly has momentum on its side and has an acute understanding of how external circumstances can lead to unexpected outcomes.

Côte-Nord Tourisme’s fortunes began to change at the turn of the decade when it underwent a branding rethink amid the disorder brought on by the COVID-19.

With travel just one of the many aspects of regular life disrupted at the pandemic’s outset in 2020, Côte-Nord repositioned itself as a premier summer-road-trip destination for urbanites seeking out vast outdoors spaces with options to gather in cities limited.

A 2020 branding reset began with a social-media-focused campaign that enlisted local residents (Nord-Côtiers) as welcome ambassadors. That campaign quickly gained traction and has since expanded its reach with the help of Julie Bélanger, a Quebec radio and television personality, to achieve big things.

Since 2020, La Bande has collected three trophies for best tourism campaign of the year at the Excellence Awards of the Alliance de l’Industrie touristique du Québec and the region has recorded four-consecutive record years tourist-occupancy growth, according to numbers collected by the provincial government.

Now, Poulin believes the conditions are right for Côte-Nord to take another step as it launches builds on it annual campaign platform.

The new hero spot follows Norwegian actor Mats Eldoen as his character travels around Côte-Nord erroneously pointing out the virtues of his homeland’s rugged beauty in his mother tongue – whale watching, fishing, sightseeing at fjords and, or course, interacting with friendly people – all while unaware that he is in Eastern Quebec.

Poulin says the concept illuminates the fact that Quebeckers and Canadians unaware of just how rich and unexplored the territory they live in is.

“Quebeckers are very proud of hearing foreigners talk about us,” Poulin says. “So that was the idea that we started with, like the foreigner eyes of looking to the Côte-Nord. People from Quebec are not very aware that it’s unique what we have here, you know.”

The campaign-leading 30- and 60-second ads call back to the road-trip theme that has helped make the destination so popular in recent years. The spot, which is subtitled in French and English, has begun airing in Quebec. Poulin says Tourisme Côte-Nord will rely heavily on social media to spread the videos throughout the rest of Canada and into Europe. The goal, Poulin says, is to make inroads into Ontario and France, adding that he has also seen some early online interest from Norway upon the new campaign’s launch.

“We think we’re gonna have a better year in 2025 than in 2024,” he says. “We think we everything came together.”

In appealing to inter-Canadian travel, the latest Tourisme Côte-Nord is similar to the “Silver Linings” campaign launched by Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism last week.