The gala, hosted by the provincial tourism ministry, featured 19 submissions from across the province, including projects from the Eastern Townships, Greater Montreal, Beauce, and Mont-Tremblant.

The MRC Pontiac’s campaign, called “Route 148: Live Your Best Vanlife in the Outaouais!” was one of the top three submissions from across the province, eventually winning the second-place prize.

The vanlife initiative started in 2022 as a way to encourage new tourists to visit the region. MRC Pontiac tourism development commissioner Stéphanie Hébert-Potter said the campaign addressed a lack of accommodations in the Pontiac while taking advantage of the region’s natural surroundings.

“Options for accommodations were a little bit limited. We felt like this [vanlife] clientele fit very well with what we have to offer in terms of this type of tourism, which is outdoor recreation experiences that are very welcoming and immersive,” Hébert-Potter said.

The circuit now features 20 haltes – or RV stops – at businesses and municipal properties across the region, tailored for Class B motorized vehicles of 21 feet or less. The haltes allow RV drivers to stay overnight for free or at a modest cost.

The MRC Pontiac has also paid to highlight the route via podcast appearances and influencers, and has hired a marketing firm to help it develop the “Vanlife” brand.

Hébert-Potter, who has been involved with the project for two years, said she was happy to receive the award especially considering it was up against other provincial heavyweights.

“Realistically, we’re not a very well known region. It’s something we’re working very hard on developing our notoriety in this space, and to see that others saw the potential that we saw in our project kind of validated it,” she said.

Many of the haltes do not have reliable data on the number of visitors they receive. Hébert-Potter said this makes it hard to quantify the success of the vanlife campaign, but said the MRC has been conducting surveys at vanlife conferences to see if they were familiar with the MRC Pontiac’s vanlife route.

In 2024, 30 per cent of people the MRC surveyed knew of Route 148, with most of those people coming from the Montérégie and Capitale-Nationale regions. In 2025, during vanfest events across the province, the MRC found 50 per cent had heard of the 148 route, while almost 20 per cent had already visited four or more of its haltes. Between 2024 and 2025, the MRC’s vanlife Facebook page saw a 30 per cent increase in followers.

“We’re getting reach from people that are further away from our area. Those are people that are coming towards our sector, spending an average of four or five nights in our region,” Hébert-Potter said, adding that local businesses, particularly agri-tourism businesses, have seen an increase in business as a result.

Scott Judd, owner of the Little Red Wagon Winery in Shawville, has been hosting vanlifers for several years at the winery’s halte. He said the MRC’s vanlife initiative turned him onto hosting vanlifers through other apps as well.

Now, he said the three RV spots the business is legally permitted are usually full during tourist season, roughly from the start of May to the middle of October. He said they have seen an increase in vanlife visitors over the year, thanks in part to the route.

“It really sparked a fire,” Judd said, adding that visitors often spend between $80-$100 at his business during a one-night stay, and often visit several haltes in the area and spend money at other local businesses.

“We will get people all throughout the week,” he said, adding that they are getting a variety of travellers of different ages and demographics, as well as repeat visitors.

“I make a point of asking people why they are coming to Shawville. Usually they say, ‘My home is on my back and I can go anywhere’,” he said, adding that some are travellers while estimating that about 70 per cent of vanlifers who visit his establishment work from home.

Hébert-Potter said there is considerable overlap between vanlife customers and agritourism customers.

“[Visitors] are not spending
[ . . . ] on accommodations. Where they’d rather spend is typically in experiences or agri-tourism, and it is a clientele that very much does adhere by the shop-local philosophy,” she said.

She said the MRC is in the final stages of a survey of people who visited the route to see what worked for them and what they would like to see changed.

“We’re trying to see with the people who came, what worked, what didn’t work, and for people who haven’t come, why haven’t they come? Are we still on their radar?”

The MRC Pontiac’s council of mayors approved a $30,000 2-year contract in September for a data analytics service, which uses cellphone data to track the location of its users. Hébert-Potter said the economic development team intends to use this data to track certain information about visitors to the region, including age, region of residence, how long they are staying in the region, and how much money they are spending at local businesses.

“[It’s] in order for us to better target certain initiatives, but also to measure how certain initiatives have been working out or maybe have not been working out, particularly in different areas in terms of economic development as a whole,” she said.

This MRC Pontiac map depicts the various vanlife haltes – or RV spots – spread across the county.

Hébert-Potter said the vanlife initiative blends well with the Pontiac’s many agritourism offerings. The MRC plans to release a survey with vanlife visitors’ feedback on what they would like to see on the route.

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