Tourism and Culture Minister Elaine Taylor left Whitehorse for Germany on Saturday to promote Yukon tourism marketing partnerships and initiatives.

While in Germany, Taylor will attend the world's largest tourism convention, International Tourism Bourse (ITB) in Berlin, from Tuesday through Thursday.

"The travel trade show, attracting more than 180,000 visitors, is an excellent opportunity to meet and connect with tour operators, wholesalers, retail agents and air carrier representatives who are all critical to the continued growth of Yukon as a travel destination," Taylor said in a statement last Thursday.

While at ITB, Taylor will introduce a unique marketing initiative in Europe where the Yukon, in collaboration with the Northwest Territories and

Nunavut, will have an enhanced presence under a banner entitled "Canada's North".

"The partnering of Canada's three territories under one banner will further leverage our marketing efforts and serve to highlight and focus the world's attention on what Canada's North has to offer in terms of the variety of tourism product options available," Taylor added.

She plans to announce the partnership at an event at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin. More than 200 representatives of the international travel trade and media are expected to attend.

Air access remains critical to the growth of the Yukon's tourism industry.

Taylor's meetings with representatives of air carriers such as Condor will focus on planned improvements to the Whitehorse International Airport and opportunities for furthering access, frequency and capacity from Europe to Yukon.

European visitation to the Yukon has been steadily growing, with a 10 per cent increase experienced in 2007.

Visitors to the Yukon on the twice-weekly Condor flights in the summer months have also grown steadily, with nearly 4,700 European visitors arriving last year, the minister said.

Taylor will also meet with officials of the Fulda tire company to discuss future partnerships.

They will include a new memorandum of understanding between Fulda Reifen and Yukon Tourism to market and promote the annual "extreme challenge" winter event which contributes more than $1 million in local spending to the Yukon's economy each winter.

While in Germany, Taylor will also attend a job fair involving the territorial Department of Education, advanced education branch, which will

focus on recruiting immigrant workers to Yukon.

German-speaking Europeans are the Yukon's largest overseas market, bringing close to 10,000 visitors to the territory each year and yielding approximately $8.5 million in spending.

School staff, administrators brainstormed education ideas

School staff and administrators from across the territory met Friday to discuss shared issues, such as student transitions.

Approximately 100 members of the Yukon First Nation Education Advisory Committee and the Association of Yukon Administrators amassed

in the Westmark Whitehorse Hotel ballroom.

At noon, they were sharing success stories about students who had made the successful leap from elementary to high school, another jurisdiction into the Yukon, and into college after graduation.

Kerry Huff, principal of Porter Creek Secondary School, told a story of a student from Inuvik and another from Pelly Crossing who joined the high school and "experienced great academic success."

Groups had previously brainstormed and written success stories they had experienced out on large sheets of graph paper which later were fixed to the walls with masking tape.

Education Minister Patrick Rouble also sat in on the discussion sessions.