April 22, 2008
In this issue:

Save the date! Regional Tourism Leaders Forum 2008
Geotourism Challenge
International Tourism: The Challenge Facing Canada
Hurry Up And Relax
Media Opportunity
Last Minute Opportunity to Exhibit at Edmonton’s Health and Wellness Show

Save the date! Regional Tourism Leaders Forum 2008

VCM’s Regional Tourism Leaders Forum 2008 will be held in Tsawwassen on June 11-12, 2008. Hear informative speakers share key advice on how to grow your tourism business, voice your opinion at the Annual General Meeting, and network with your fellow tourism business owners. Registration will begin in the last week of April. If you have questions, please contact Laura at Laura@vcmbc.com (preferred) or 604-484-5361.

Geotourism Challenge

Wanna enter National Geographic Adventure’s Geotourism Challenge? Besides a $5000 prize
for each of the top three finalists, the recognition and potential media exposure to the winners will be huge. Just go to www.changemakers.net/competition/geotourism, press "nominate", and fill in the form. (Ignore the nomination deadline; it's changed.)

Nominate your favorite example of geotourism -- defined by National Geographic as tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place: its environment, heritage, culture, aesthetics, and the well-being of its residents. Changemakers will take it from there, making the contact and inviting the full entry. In addition to travel, any innovation that supports sense of place, cultural and historic preservation, natural conservation, endemic arts, etc., is also eligible. Candidates should be truly innovative, and replicable.

Also, to supplement the many small independent candidates already entered, Changemakers would love to see more entries for innovators in corporations and governments. The innovator might be a mayor, a governor, a CEO, a middle manager, or any employee who has introduced a successful idea of appropriate caliber.

International Tourism: The Challenge Facing Canada

It seems that most countries are seeing a rise in their number of visitors lately, but in Canada our international tourism is declining (largely due to the fewer arrivals from the United States). Factors are well documented, but to gain a special insight into International Travel and the Airline Industry, click here for a copy of a recent speech by Jean-Marc Eustache, President and CEO of Transat A.T. Inc. You should find this pretty interesting!

Hurry Up And Relax

The pressures of contemporary life are palpable to most adults who are employed full time and, in particular, those in the workforce who happen to reside in a household in which both the husband and wife are employed full time (approximately 60% of all "spousal" households). The resulting sense of "time poverty" has precipitated a gradual decline in the length of vacations, and a corresponding surge in leisure trips taken over weekends.

According to the results of our soon-to-be released 2008 National Travel Monitor, weekend trips remain the most popular for Americans as reflected in their incidence versus that of both mid-week and extended (5+ night) trips. In fact, weekend leisure trips (4 nights or less including a Saturday) now represent a remarkable 53% of all vacations taken by Americans, up from 46% in 2000. The decline in the popularity of weekday trips appears to be directly related to the increasing difficulty people have in getting away from work during the week. The trend also reflects the growing appeal of short getaways to abandon the pressures of work in order to re-energize, if only for a few days at a time! No wonder Saturday is now the busiest night of the week in hotels and resorts all across America.

But the aging of the U.S. population has also yielded another very interesting phenomenon: an increase in the incidence of extended trips (5+ nights). As one might expect, this phenomenon is evident primarily among older adults who are semi-retired or retired, individuals who have the luxury of planning longer trips without worrying about the demands of what awaits back at the office or on the job.

For more information on the Ypartnership/Yankelovich 2008 National Travel Monitor, please visit the Publications section of www.ypartnership.com.

Media Opportunity

Fresh off a trip to the United States’ most famous zip code, Jennifer and Laura are still seeing stars. OK, so there were no celebrity sightings at this year’s Canada Media Marketplace in Beverly Hills, but Jennifer and Laura did have time for lunch at a major celebrity hotspot and enjoyed Canada Media Marketplace’s final event: a British Columbia-themed evening at Paramount Studios.

At Canada Media Marketplace 2008, Vancouver, Coast & Mountains was able to build and extend relationships with key media in the United States. Both Jennifer and Laura were very pleased by the quality of the scheduled media appointments and by the high level of media interest in Vancouver, Coast & Mountains. There were a couple of interesting trends that emerged: first, there was lots of media interest in sustainable ‘green’ tourism. Second, there were more online journalists at Canada Media Marketplace 2008 than ever before. This shows that travel journalism is evolving rapidly in a mixed media of traditional newspapers and magazines combined with new media and online journalists.

New! VCM Media Opportunities

We’re looking for unique story ideas. We'll take your ideas, re-write the ideas into stories, and include them in our popular Story Starters bulletin, which is sent to over 800 targeted media contacts. We're currently collecting submissions for June, July, and August 2008.

Opportunity #1 – What makes your business ‘green’? Do you recycle rainwater or follow the 100 mile diet? If so, we want to know! Added bonus: tell us what you’re doing for Earth Day to be included in a special press release.

Opportunity #2 – With the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games less than two years away, we want to hear about your gold-medal stories. Is your community the hometown of a famous winter Olympian? Is an Olympic bobsled team training in your area? Tell us about it!

Opportunity #3 – Do you have an upcoming festival or event in the summer of 2008? Does your business have something new or changed: maybe it’s a new getaway package or a specially renovated room? Does an interesting character or location make your tourism business unique?

Click here to submit your ideas or email them to Laura@vcmbc.com. The deadline to submit story ideas for June, July, and August 2008 is April 30, 2008.

See our May 2008 issue of Story Starters here.

Questions? Please contact Laura at Laura@vcmbc.com (preferred) or 604-484-5361.

Last Minute Opportunity to Exhibit at Edmonton’s Health and Wellness Show

One of Western Canada’s largest Health & Wellness Show’s will be held on Saturday, April 26 and Sunday April 27, 2008 at the Mayfield Inn Trade Centre in Edmonton.

They are offering their 3 remaining booths on a Contra basis to hotels, resorts, spas and other destinations that want to promote their establishments to close to 15,000 consumers in just 2 days.

Demographics are 25 – 65 years with an average household income of $100,000 PLUS.  Close to 180 Exhibitors will be participating including:  Safeway, Accu-Chek, Shoppers Drug Mart, Centrum, Advil, Clarins, Dare Foods, Kelloggs and Novaderm.

They hope to promote destinations that promote wellness - Hotels, Resorts, Golf, Ski, Spa, Hiking destinations, etc.

This is a fantastic opportunity to participate in a high traffic show with no hard costs. Promote your business to an established consumer in the Edmonton market.

Interested parties PLEASE CALL – Jenny Kachkar, Show Producer at (780) 424 - 9224.    www.edmontonhealthandwellness.com