August 3, 2010

Vancouver, Coast & Mountains Announces Launch of New Partnership with Think! Social Media
Social Media Workshops
How to evaluate Websites, Blogs and Tweeters
Media Report
May 2010 Travel Numbers Show Reasons for Optimism and Concern
White Rock BlueZone - Free Wi-Fi
Longing for the Self-Serve Airport

Vancouver, Coast & Mountains Announces Launch of
New Partnership with Think! Social Media
Innovative tourism marketing through social media

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (July 29, 2010) – Vancouver, Coast & Mountains announced today the launch of a partnership with Think! Social Media as part of a pro-active social media marketing strategy. Vancouver, Coast & Mountains is leading the regional tourism industry with this innovative partnership by offering tourism businesses an opportunity to strategically participate in social media marketing, as well as offering social media education to accommodation and activity providers designed to increase consumer awareness.

“We are excited about our partnership with Vancouver, Coast and Mountains Tourism Region. This relationship is a perfect match because they are an industry leader in our hometown,” says Rodney Payne, Co-founder and Executive Director of Think! Social Media. “Our business is designed around creativity and innovation in the tourism sector. We see a huge opportunity in social media, and Destination Marketing Organization partnerships are essential to its realization,” adds Payne.

Historically, tourism marketers have been trailing consumers in their adoption of social media. Vancouver, Coast & Mountains President & CEO, Kevan Ridgway, hopes that “by taking a leadership role and with our partnership with Think!, VCM will offer a way for busy tourism business operators to realize the results of using social media as a marketing tool, without the labour demands that this thriving industry requires.” Ridgway also comments, “It’s a win-win for everyone, hopefully increasing visitation to the region, as well as directly communicating to the consumer, who will be able to access special offers and deals that they may not have been aware of.”

The first project for Vancouver, Coast & Mountains and Think! Social Media will be a pilot Summer Social Media Campaign, set to begin on August 2, 2010. This will be the first of many projects in this mutually beneficial partnership.

Please contact Jennifer Rhyne, Director, Communications for more information - jennifer@vcmbc.com or 604.637.9046

Social Media Workshops

Vancouver Coast & Mountains is offering full day social media workshops for accommodation and activity providers. The intent of the course is to increase awareness and understanding of social tools for tourism businesses. The workshop will be conducted by Think! Social Media and has been compiled in conjunction with, Paul Cubbon (UBC) and William Bakker (Tourism BC).

The workshop will include the following five topic areas:

• Understanding the importance of Trip Advisor
• Understanding Social Media
• Marketing on Facebook: Community building and Facebook Ads
• Twitter as a communication tool
• How Blogs can help you increase sales

The workshops will be offered throughout October and November of this year and space will be limited. For more information please follow the appropriate links below.

Social Media Workshop for ACCOMMODATION providers.

Social Media Workshop for ACTIVITY providers.

How to evaluate Websites, Blogs and Tweeters

The print world is changing and migrating online, so measuring web-based coverage has yet to reach an industry standard, but here’s what media experts are using so far:

www.compete.com - To measure basic audience size, enter in website name (or blog). Unfortunately this tool does not work for BlogSpot (or Google hosted) blogs. To qualify a good blog, use for example, HelloBC.com as benchmark, which receives about 5,000 unique visitors per month. A good travel website will:

1. have a depth of travel information
2. be about travel in BC and
3. be read by potential visitors.

www.quancast.com – another great source for website information

www.klout.com - To evaluate your favourite Tweeters, and their web influence, (known as klout), enter the twitter handle (i.e. VCMBC) into the klout search field, or if using HootSuite or Tweetdeck dashboards, klout will appear in the list of those you are following. The bigger the number the better. A good score is about 50.

Google Analytics - Contact the web master, or blogger for website stats, they should be able to provide Google Analytics, and then compare with the information presented on the above sites.

Media Report

Summer is always a busy time for media requests, and this year is no different. Despite the press being saturated with destination stories from the VCM region leading up to and throughout the 2010 Games, the media are not short of stories to tell. The common trend: media what to know what is beyond the region’s gateways of Vancouver and Whistler. Requests for those hidden gems and secret spots and what else is hot are flourishing. Here’s a peak of those “other stories.”

Recent Coverage
Canadian Press – Canadaeast.com - From fishing to spelunking, there’s plenty to do in BC’s Parks –Skookumchuk Narrows and Manning Park

Sunset Magazine - Pick up this month’s issue for a print only feature on the Sunshine Coat’s Painted Boat Resort Spa & Marina. Or click here to view.

East Week Magazine – Sing Toa News Group (Hong Kong, China) - 10 Days in the Region – Rocky Mountaineer, Peak2Peak, Granville Island, Capilano Suspension Bridge, Hell’s Gate, Circle Farms (different version in print)

Blogged
Pemberton – Webblogtheworld.com - Slow Food Cycle Sunday
White Rock – loriexploring.wordpress.com – There really is a white rock in White Rock

Watch out for 100 Mile Tourist
Beginning May 15, and the next 15 Saturdays, the Vancouver Sun’s Travel Section will play tour guide for prospective 100 Mile Tourists by featuring surprising getaways within 90 minutes travel time of Vancouver. Many of VCM’s destinations have been pitched so be on the lookout for your community. Here’s what’s been covered so far:

The Lower Mainland Magical Museum Tour – Langley and the Fraser Valley

Soak up the Sunshine with BC Ferries - Lower Sunshine coast

Recent in-region Media
Vancouver, Coast & Mountains alongside the other five regional DMO’s in partnership with MTCA, hosted 40 top-notch Vancouver media. On July 22 and 23, a Vancouver media were invited to an intimate lunch to discuss and learn more about what’s new in the province. Media included writers from: Westworld Magazine, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Courier, Georgia Straight, Up! WestJet, Western Living, Vancouver Magazine and more.

May 2010 Travel Numbers Show Reasons for Optimism and Concern

While several key tourism markets showed continued declines in May 2010, there were many markets that showed significant growth according to numbers released last week by Statistics Canada.

Canada saw significant gains year-over-year versus May 2009 from a number of Asian and South American markets, including several emerging markets, as well as some rebounds in some recently struggling markets.

These include:

• Japan: 44.6%
• South Korea: 32.2%
• Brazil: 30.5%
• India: 21.7%
• China: 15.1%

Visitation to Canada also increased year-over-year versus May 2009 from several traditional inbound markets, including France (8.6%), Germany (8.2%), Australia (20.4%) and the U.K. (1.2%).

Overall numbers, however, continue to be dragged down by ongoing declines from the United States, which dropped by a further 13.6% for the month, and 9.5% for the year to date. Combined with the ongoing freefall in visitation from Mexico - down 30.5% for May and 43.3% for the year to date as a result last year’s introduction of new visa requirements – the North American market continues to pull total international visitation into the negative: 10.2% for the month, and 7.5% for the year.

For more information, please see Statistics Canada’s International Travel: Advance Information service bulletin for May 2010.

For more information, please contact Catherine Sadler, TIAC Manager, Research at csadler@tiac.travel or 613-238-6378.

White Rock Bluezone – Free Wi-Fi

Blue Jamb Media Inc. has launched the White Rock Bluezone, a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth network enabling visitors to the city's promenade to surf the net on their laptops, receive video content about local events and happenings on their Bluetooth-enabled cell phones and download a City application, all for free. The innovative advertising concept is a tourism-industry first that's enabling White Rock to provide visitors with the information they want, when they want it.

The White Rock Bluezone features 14 Access Points in businesses along the 2.5 kilometre oceanfront promenade that attracts residents and visitors shopping, dining and beaching. Each "hotspot" has a Bluetooth component that sends a permission based text message to all Bluetooth-enabled phones within a 30-metre radius. If accepted, the user receives a 40-second video promoting local tourism events and schedules. A Wi-Fi function of the Access Point enables smart phones and laptops to pull the video content as well as surf the Internet. The Wi-Fi splash page links to a Tourism White Rock phone application to access the city's tourism mobile website for information on things to do and places to go. The businesses provide the Internet connection in exchange for the opportunity to market themselves within the mobile space.

Click here for the complete press release.

One common piece of advice you'll get from an old-time business traveller with decades of flights under his belt is to never get mad at the person behind the airline counter. No matter how peremptory he or he is, being rude won't get you where you're going any faster.

But these days the best advice might be to avoid the counter altogether. And in some places you can.

Passengers at airports in Frankfurt and Munich and New Zealand can now board themselves, using bar-coded, kiosk-generated boarding passes that let them through unstaffed turnstiles.
In fact, within New Zealand, there aren't many human hold-ups any more. Air New Zealand's North American vice-president, Roger Poulton, says that for domestic flights, passengers sail through “almost people-less airports.”

According to a survey of about 4,500 frequent travellers across Canada and the United States by tech company NCR (which makes airport kiosks) and released at the end of June, 73 per cent of people said they would be more likely to choose an airline “that offered them greater control over managing their entire travel experience through self-service.”

Click here for the rest of the story