November 21, 2007
In this issue:

Congratulations Kevan!
The Vancouver, Coast & Mountains Travel Guide strikes it rich...... Gold to be exact, and Bronze too!!
Learn The Value Of International Team Acclimatization, Hosting, Tourism And Business Opportunities Arising From BC Hosting The 2010 Winter Games
Way to Go Quality Hotel Airport!
Branding Champions - Canada is Number 6
Trust us – Blog is not a Star Trek Term
Media Report: How To Kick-Start The New Year
We LOVE the Internet!
Web Data Report

Congratulations Kevan!

At its Annual General Meeting in Victoria on Sunday November 4th, Kevan Ridgway was elected to the TIAC Board of Directors, having been nominated by the Council of Tourism Associations and seconded by Tourism Vancouver. This is a welcome honour for Vancouver, Coast & Mountains Tourism Region to be represented at the National level. It provides the opportunity to bring the voice of small business, community and regional DMOs to the table from Western Canada. Kevan joins Nancy Stibbard, Capilano Group of Companies, and James Terry, Rocky Mountaineer Vacations from British Columbia on the 2007 - 2008 Board.

Please feel free to e-mail Kevan at kevan@vcmbc.com with any national concerns or opportunities.

And just for fun - What kind of traveller are you?

Find out at www.canada.travel/eq.

The Vancouver, Coast & Mountains Travel Guide strikes it rich...... Gold to be exact, and Bronze too!!

It was recently announced that the 2007 Vancouver, Coast & Mountains Travel Guide has won Gold at this year’s Craftsman Club Gallery Awards!  The Craftsman Club is an international association of printers with local chapters.  The association’s initiatives include awards programs, which start at the local level with regional winners moving on to the next level of competition. The 2007 VCM Travel Guide was printed by Teldon Print Media, who submitted the guide for consideration for this award.

“Entering competitions and winning awards is a great accomplishment for printers because they are peer group judged” says Ken Schneider from Teldon Print Media.  “We here at Teldon developed the ability to print these very high quality, fine line screen web jobs because of a handful of markets we service, one of the major ones being Tourism.”

Schneider adds, “Vancouver, Coast & Mountains was the very first DMO to take advantage of these high quality web abilities - as well as being the first client to have the internal abilities to design a product at that same quality level.”

More good news - the 2007 Sunshine Coast Experience Guide also took home a Bronze at this year’s awards.

We would like to thank all of our Community Partners and Tourism Partner Businesses who have supported our publications throughout the years.  Your participation and contributions are proof positive that when we work together, all things are possible!

Keep an eye out for the mailman in mid-December, when he’ll be delivering a copy of the 2008 Vancouver, Coast & Mountains Travel Guide – hot off the presses!

Learn The Value Of International Team Acclimatization, Hosting, Tourism And Business Opportunities Arising From BC Hosting The 2010 Winter Games.

Supported by RBC, The Province of BC and CTV, the RBC 2010 Legacies Now Speaker Series is an Olympic Games transfer-of-knowledge program that helps communities and local businesses learn from people who played key roles in previous Olympic and Paralympic Games.   

The next speaker is Craig Phillips, Secretary General, Australian Olympic Committee and will be in BC from December 4 - 7, 2007.  Join Craig Phillips as he shares his experience from ten Olympic Games and discusses what National Olympic Committees look for from communities and businesses for pre-Games training and acclimatization.  Understand team needs in order to offer relevant programming, services and facilities.

Craig will be doing a live interview style free webcast on December 7 at 12 noon PST, hosted by CTV's 2010 Reporter, Mike Killeen that can be viewed at www.2010LegaciesNow.com.  He will also be speaking in Kamloops, Prince George and in Vancouver at a Vancouver Board of Trade Lunch.

Live Webcast - Friday December 7, 12 noon PST

Log on to www.2010LegaciesNow.com

Kamloops - Tuesday December 4 
In partnership with Kamloops Spirit of BC Community Committee, Kamloops Chamber of Commerce and Venture Kamloops
Call 250.372.7722

Vancouver - Wednesday December 5
In partnership with The Vancouver Board of Trade
Visit www.boardoftrade.com Events & Activities for tickets

Prince George - Thursday December 6    
In partnership wit the Prince George Spirit of BC Community Committee, Initiatives Prince George and the City of Prince George
call Lynne at 250.564.0282  

Visit www.2010LegaciesNow.com for more information.

Way to Go Quality Hotel Airport!

Choice Hotels Canada has honoured its top performing hotels with a 2007 Gold Hospitality Award. One of the Western Canada winners is the Quality Hotel Airport (South) in Richmond, BC. Congratulations on this great achievement!

Branding Champions - Canada is Number 6

Futurebrand is proud to announce the launch the third annual Country Brand Index, in conjunction with Weber Shandwick, during London's World Travel Market.

2007 top country brands

This year's Index includes rankings and trends as well as country brand analytics, travel motivations, challenges and opportunities within the worlds of travel, tourism and country branding. The Index has been expanded this year to poll more than 2,600 international travelers on new criteria such as "Most Friendly Locals" and "Most Environmental." country brands. The study also deconstructs Brand U.S.A and outlines emerging global interests, including voluntourism, eco-accountability and non-hospitality entrants in the travel category.

Visit www.futurebrand.com/cbi to download a copy of the 2007 Index and share your comments with us on the CBI blog.

Trust us – Blog is not a Star Trek Term

Blog visitation is growing at a rapid rate, and the user-generated content appearing on blogs can have a significant impact on both destination and travel supplier selection. This month's e-newsletter from YPartnership reveals some interesting findings about this phenomenon.

BOOMING BLOGS
The influence of the Internet on travel planning continues to grow. According to our 2007 National Leisure Travel MONITORSM, two thirds of active travelers now go exclusively to the Internet to obtain information when planning vacations, and 4 out of 10 now report "regularly reading" visitor critiques and opinions online (more than the 3 out of 10 who report reading critiques and reviews authored by professional journalists!). Most of these user-generated opinions may be found in the growing population of web logs (blogs).

The role of blogs in the evaluation of travel suppliers is one of increasing interest to most travel marketers. Of particular interest is the influence of user-generated reviews on the selection of specific hotels, resorts, attractions and other travel suppliers. Much of this interest is due to the growing incidence of travel-related blog visitation: one quarter of leisure travelers who have used the Internet to obtain information on travel experiences and/or suppliers have visited a "blog" to seek and/or review information about a specific destination or travel supplier during the past twelve months. Nearly one third of those who have consulted a blog for travel planning purposes state they have visited Tripadvisor.com. Other popular sites include Traveller.org, Ysearchblog.com (Yahoo! search blog), Myspace.com, Virtualtourist.com and Lonelyplanet.com as revealed in table appearing below.

	2007 %
Have Visited To Seek And/Or Review Information About A Destination Or Travel Service Supplier During Past 12 Months*	25
Have Visited:**
TripAdvisor.com	32
Traveller.org	19
Ysearchblog.com (Yahoo! Search Blog)	17
MySpace.com	15
VirtualTourist.com	13
LonelyPlanet.com	11
Travelblog.org	8
LiveJournal.com	3
Xanga.com	2
Other	23
*Among those who have used the Internet to obtain travel information for one or more leisure trips during the last 12 months.
**Among those who have visited a blog during the last 12 months. Does not equal 100% due to multiple responses.

These numbers represent a significant increase over the levels recorded just two years ago, thereby underscoring the growing interest consumers have in seeking what they believe to be more "objective" assessments of travel experiences from individuals who can comment with a high degree of ascribed credibility. This type of "conversational marketing" represents a new discipline in marketing science, and the implication for travel service marketers is clear: popular blog content should be monitored regularly to remain abreast of the buzz circulating online and evaluate the potential influence user-generated content may have on future customer behavior.

Source: YPartnership. Copyright © 2007 Ypartnership 423 South Keller Rd., Suite 100OrlandoFL32810
All Rights Reserved

Media Report: How To Kick-Start The New Year

With only 40 days left before 2008, the media department is already thinking of ways to start off the year with a bang. Here’s our list of media opportunities to help you kick-start the New Year:

1. Story Starters - Over 800 travel media (and counting!) have signed up or asked to receive our Story Starters bulletin. All you need to do is click here and tell us what’s new and exciting that makes your tourism business unique. We’ll turn your products or events into creative story ideas and include them as part of our monthly Story Starters bulletin. 

2. Quirky community facts - In early 2008 Vancouver, Coast & Mountains tourism will be launching a brand new online press kit. The press kit will be filled with fun facts, story ideas and information about the region. Do you have a fun or quirky fact to include about your community? Tell us about it! For example, if your community claims to have more Maple trees than anywhere else in Canada, we want to know.

3. Hosting press trips - Are you interested in hosting media on a press trip? Send an email to Laura@vcmbc.com to let us know.

But 2007 is not over yet! Here’s what we’ve been up to:

Articles, articles and more articles! Hot off the press is this fabulous article featured in Canadian Geographic Travel Magazine that resulted from a Vancouver, Coast & Mountains press trip. For a list of sample articles we received in September and October, please click here. For the complete list please contact Laura (604-484-5361 or laura@vcmbc.com). 

In early October, Jennifer flew to England to attend the Annual Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) Convention in Manchester. SATW represents more than 1300 professional journalists, photographers, and media relations professionals in North America.

On November 4, Laura attended the Canadian Tourism Partners’ media dinner in Los Angeles, hosted by the Canadian Tourism Commission. This was a wonderful opportunity to showcase Vancouver, Coast & Mountains to this targeted group of travel journalists.

November 8 was the Travel Media Association of Canada (TMAC) BC Chapter’s 2010 Olympic Event. Laura met and mingled with the key media contacts for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games. Keynote speaker was Chris Brumwell, Director of Media Relations at VANOC.

Still to come, on December 6 Jennifer will be attending a Tourism BC professional development day, focused on Communications Planning and facilitated by Optimum Public Relations.

As always, please keep those story ideas coming! Don’t hesitate to contact Laura (laura@vcmbc.com) or Jennifer (jennifer@vcmbc.com) if you have any questions about media!

We LOVE the Internet!

What a success so far! VCM’s first Pay-Per-Click Campaign has begun with a bang – and our participating advertising partners will hopefully be the benefactors.

Officially our Pay-Per-Click campaign started off with the optimization of the landing pages created on www.vcmbc.com. By optimizing these pages, they became circulated into the search engines and could stand alone without the added feed by the Google Ads. Content Syndicated press releases (press releases written chock full of keywords) were then launched to drive consumers to our partners packages and the results have been amazing!

The following information is taken from data which has been provided to VCM on the results from the first press release – data will be available shortly on the results of the second release.

The data is actually only based on one of three different feeds used, so the actual numbers should be around three times higher.

Some of the impressive numbers are as followed:

1. The article has been indexed over 369 times.
2. Over 174,000 people have read the release, a good average for a release is around 70,000 - 90,000.
3. The release was picked up an estimated 844 times (picked up by a consumer or media person)
4. Some of the additional sources which have picked up the release were: CTC’s Tourism Daily, H-syndicate.org, newsbigg.net, blog.boo.uz, American and Hotel and Lodging Association website, and newbureau.ca.

These are great results for the first release!

With the actual Google ads themselves, we have had them positioned to run during peak times on the Internet, with our focus on Alberta, British Columbia and Washington visitors. Our average position for the ads on Google have been in the top 2.8 spots. Also the ads have received 284,773 impressions (an impression is a single display of a particular ad on a web page or in our case an ad on Google research pages).

If you have any questions about this campaign, please don’t hesitate to contact Kelly Miller, Partner Service Coordinator at 604.484.5366 or kellym@vcmbc.com.

Web Data Report

As we see the snow line coming further down the mountain sides, we know we are entering a new season – winter. This has got the energy going in winter enthusiasts around the world. Here at Vancouver, Coast and Mountains we are not only seeing emails from visitors about the opening dates for our own local mountains, but are seeing related search terms such as Mount Seymour popping up on our keyword entrances.

From the last month, we saw a total number of 23,619 absolute unique visitors (which Google Analytics classifies as one count for every first visit). From these 23,619 visits there were a total 58,833 page views on our website. Of these page views, our travel special pages seem to be quite popular, as these pages are found in our top four entrance pages.

Of the individuals who are visiting our site, the majority are from Canada; with over 20,000 visitors. When looking at the individual cities, the first city outside of our region is Victoria, followed by Kelowna, Calgary and East York. However, our highest number of visitors are from within our own region.

The second highest location of visitors is the United States; with California, Washington, New York and Texas rounding up the top four states. Surprisingly, the order of the top four states hasn’t seen much change over the last few months.

To round off the rest of the top countries visiting our site, there are the UK, Australia and Germany.

Our numbers do change daily and we are still continuing to work on the optimization of our pages to ensure they and our partners are easily found on search engines such as Google. If you have any questions about our reports or would like a report of your listing on www.vcmbc.com, please contact Kelly Miller at 604-484-5366 or kellym@vcmbc.com.