My 10 essential films of all time.

Bell Lightbox the new heart for the Toronto International Film Festival on track to open in 2010. The $129 building should be ready in time for the 2010 festival. While the Festival is perhaps the most important festival (cultural or otherwise) in Canada, it is not the only thing that the Toronto Film Festival Group does. TIFFG has a breadth of programming and activities that celebrate film including many educational initiatives throughout the year. I recently received an email from TIFFG (Noah Cowan, artistic director) asking me to participate in their Essentials of World Cinema Survey. This survey will be a "key component of our inaugural programming for Bell Lightbox." The survey asks for one's "Ten essential films of world cinema." The following is my list, in no particular order:

Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)

Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)

Modern Times (Chaplin)

La Dolce Vita (Fellini)

Citizen Kane (Welles)

The Godfather (Coppola)

Les Quatre cents coups (Truffaut)

Kagemusha (Kurosawa)

Napoleon (Abel Gance)

2001 a Space Odyssey (Kubrick)

Popcorn, anyone? Action!
Jaime Horwitz

Inbound numbers are in and it's not pretty (not too ugly either).

Canadian tourism inbound numbers are out and reflect the extent to which the global recession is affecting us. US visits, not surprisingly continue to slide, even though there was some improvement in February compared to January. However, compared to February 2008, US visits were down a further 4.6% Most international markets showed declines. The UK was down a whopping 20.9% compared to February 2008. Germany is holding well with a 1.6% increase from February last year. China and India, in particular, showed increases. Mexico was down 9.2% compared to February 2008, but Spain was up 7.1%. Comparing February 2009 to February 2009, the overall picture tells a sad story, albeit not totally unexpected: USA - down 4.6%, Europe - down 9%, Asia - down 15.9%, North America, Central America & Caribbean - down 3.5%, South America - up 2.2%, Oceania & Other Ocean islands - up 0.1%.

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Source: Statistics Canada International Travel: Advance Information bulletin

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Jaime

The Conquest bust - Is it right to threaten guests with jail if they don't pay AGAIN? Bad Mexico Bad Dominican Bad!

"Melissa Handley knew she was in real trouble when she discovered the lock on her hotel room had been changed – with all her belongings inside...

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When Handley, who booked her vacation in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, with Conquest Vacations, approached staff at the Hotel Grand Oasis, she was told to pay $1,000 (U.S.) or she wouldn't be able to leave the country."

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"Handley is just one of hundreds of former Conquest Vacations customers arriving home from popular vacation destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean armed with stories of hotel staff no longer able to speak English, threats of jail time if thousands of dollars of extra charges went unpaid, and abandonment by Canadian consulate officials." Toronto Star, April 18, 2009

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Oasis Hotels & Resorts issued a statement ""Conquest never paid us. .." Oasis blamed Conquest with some reason. However, this whole thing is a black eye for all tour operators everywhere. Not that I would, I mostly book travel directly with the supplier (hotel, airline, etc), but this may hurt all other tour operators. How can the consumer trust any tour operator in Canada or elsewhere when something like this can happen? I am furious with the hotels in Mexico, the Domincan Republic and any other destination that has threatened Canadian travelers in anyway. It is not the traveler's fault if the hotel has not been paid. There are processes and business practices that the traveler does not even need to know about. It is up to the industry to make sure that these problems are dealt with in an appropriate manner. Yes, Conquest deserves all the criticism going their way. They left people stranded without notice. But the hotels in Mexico and Dominican Republic - I've mostly read about Oasis Hotels & Resorts but there may be others - have behaved in a very unprofessional, unethical and unimaginative manner. The fact is that any hotel or resort that has done this to a guest has damaged their brand immensely.

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I will not forget this brand myself and will never consider it as a possible place to stay. Instead of treating guests like criminals (understanding that in the world of business, organizations go bankrupt and you must consider this when doing business), they should have explained the situation and told guests that they understood Conquest had gone out of business; that they hadn't been and probably would not get paid, but that they understood it wasn't the guests' fault (as they had already paid for their Holiday), and thus they would absorb the cost of the trip. They could have created a PR campaign on the spot - get some video testimonials from happy guests, asked them to write letters or blog posts for them, etc. you get the point. They would have had enormous publicity and would have increased the equity of their brand (as would the destination). They (and local tourism authorities) missed a big opportunity here. What they are getting now is a big stain on their brands and a black eye to their reputation. And the destinations have also suffered in the eyes of many travelers who will now think twice about traveling to destinations where they could be treated in such a manner.

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Jaime Horwitz MBA

¿Online Revealed Canada or Canada-e-Connect?

I spent the last day and a half in Niagara Falls attending Online Revealed Canada (Thank you Alicia and Patricia for the invite). It's my first time at Online Revealed and I thought it was important for me to come in order to see and experience the conference vis a vis Canada-e-Connect eTourism Strategy Conference. The reason being that there may be some confusion in the marketplace as to the difference between the two conferences. While the terminology of some of the sessions is similar ORC focuses more on an educational approach, a workshop format, whereas Canada e Connect focuses more on strategic presentations trying to cover all topics related to new media and eTourism. While Online Revealed Canada focuses on eMarketing, Canada-e-Connect focuses on all areas of strategy that are or can be touched, influenced, affected by digital technology (the new standard gauge to use Dr. Ian Fenwick's analogy), i.e. Marketing, Distribution, Human Resources, Systems, Structure, etc. One of CeC's objectives is also to present to the attendees the latest trends in eTourism technology and strategy from anywhere in the world in order to provide a framework for the industry to ascertain where we are compared to the rest of the world, to our competitors.

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It is my hope that both ORC and CeC can collaborate with each other in some way in the future because it can only benefit the Canadian Tourism Industry as a whole. The industry employs over 600,000 people. ORC and CeC together have only reached about 1200 people (perhaps). If we count those who have attended more than once, these events might have reached 1000 members of the Canadian tourism industry. Even if we considered the audience for any of these events to be only canadian tourism professionals in managerial or marketing positions it is clear that we have a long way to go to reach everyone in our potential audiences.

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Jaime Horwitz MBA
Co-Chair Canada-e-Connect 2010

http://www.canadaeconnect.com/

A social networking site for the Canadian Tourism Community

There's been a lot of talk on and offline about social media and social media marketing in the tourism space for the past two or three years. Most of this talk has focused on social media marketing: how to do it, how to take advantage of it, how to measure its effectiveness, how to participate in the conversation, whether to participate in the conversation or not, how to promote your brand or destination, how to protect your reputation, etc. Most of the talk has been about social media marketing to the consumer/traveler, but not much has been said about business to business social media, at least not within the Canadian tourism industry. While many Canadian tourism professionals have signed up on LinkedIn and many have joined groups on that site or on Facebook, until now there has not been a social networking site solely for the Canadian Tourism Community. Enters www.canadiantourismcommunity.com.

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Cactus Rock New Media Ltd. has launched the CanadianTourismCommunity social networking site as a service to the industry and as an extension of this blog. I must admit that the success of the Spanish tourism industry's site, Turismo 2.0, to which I also belong, made me think as to why we haven't had a similar social networking site in Canada. Being one of the most connected countries in the world with some excellent work being done in the digital tourism space, I have found it ironic that we don't take advantage of the capabilites available to us to network, to share knowledge, to stay in touch with our partners, clients and potential partners and clients, to learn from each other. And so I decided to put the industry to the test and see if we can (take advantage).

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The Canadian Tourism Community site, built on the Ning platform, is a private social networking site. Membership is free but by invitation only. At the moment there are two reasons why private and why by invitation only. First, it is easier to manage and monitor that way. While I'm happy to manage the site, which I hope will help my own networking efforts in the industry, it takes more time to monitor an open site because there are many spammers out there trying to take advantage of open sites. Second, being a private site it may be more comfortable for members of the industry who are concerned about, well, privacy.

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Having a social networking site exclusively for the Canadian tourism industry and its partners is better than forming groups on Facebook or LinkedIn because the primary purpose of the site is to serve the needs of the members of the industry who choose to use it, i.e. the layout and content are not cluttered by non-tourism related stuff (or ads). Each member has a big page with clear font and can write a blog, upload photos, videos or documents. Members can write on each other's comments boxes or sent private messages. Also, the site has chat capabilities for those who wish to communicate in real time, a feature that may come in handy to have conversations with partners overseas.

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The success of the site will depend on the involvement of the industry as a whole. The site is not for techies or eBusiness people. The site is for everyone involved in the Canadian Tourism Industry, from restarauranteurs, to hoteliers, to human resources specialists, PR people, suppliers, tour operators, receptive tour operators, etc. As of this writing there are 45 members in the www.canadiantourismcommunity.com. Our Spanish counterpart, Turismo 2.0 (online for a few years now) has almost 5,000! Now more than ever, we need to find better, more efficient ways to communicate among ourselves and this is one tool that can facilitate this (who knows, it might even save you money or get you a new partner/client. The best way to understand social media is to participate. If you are in the Canadian tourism industry or work for or with anyone in the Canadian tourism industry, whether in Canada or outside Canada feel free to join. To get an invite write to jaime (at) cactusrock.com

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Regards,

Jaime Horwitz MBA

Co-Chair Canada-e-Connect Montreal 2010

Online travel trends from a Travolution blog post

One of my favourite blogs to follow is the Travolution Blog. If you work in the travel industry, this blog is a must read. A couple of months ago it published an interesting piece by Professor Dimitrios Buhalis, research editor for Travolution and chair of the Enter09 conference in Amsterdam. The post's title was "24 things to think about if you are involved in online travel." I won't reproduce the 24 things here (clic on the post's title to read the whole thing). I just want to comment on some of them:

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1) Context is king - due to the relevance to consumer needs - this includes location, party, purpose of visti, timing, etc. Absolutely agree. Context and content go hand in hand, but relevance is everything when marketing your destination, hotel, attraction, etc. Twitter's success notwithstanding, search is still the biggest digital tool and what searchers want the most is truly relevant results to their queries. Right now, for example, might be a good time to ramp up Golf marketing campaigns since golfers are beginning to plan as the weather gets better.

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2) Content needs to be reorganized and presented to serve context. It almost goes without saying, but much harder to implement.

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3) Gadgets that can be plugged into iGoogle, Facebook, Vista and other platforms which can extend the reach of a website. Content travels and as Dr Fenwick pointed out at Canada-e-Connect 2009, content has been liberated from devices. Destination should spend some time and effort developing engaging gadgets, widgets and iPhone/Blackberry apps.

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9) Two conflicting trends - from "Personalisation/CRM/need everything about the customer - to "leave me alone/give me what I want/you don't onw me. Permission is everything and it is a challenge. How do you get potential customer's permission to market to them? One way is to make it fun first perhaps via an iPhone app or perhaps by building a follower base on Twitter or a fan page on Facebook. Or making use of interactive outdoor campaigns using QR codes to engage people. Whatever the media, it will become increasingly important to get people's permission to address them directly given the proliferation of digital addressable media.

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12) Twitter is becoming the next big thing and many predict that it will have a similar success to SMS due to its simplicity, interactivity, speed and relevance. Agree. Twitter seems to be already the next big thing, even though it only has about 7 to 8 million users currently. But don't go all crazy about Twitter just yet. Twitter's strength at the moment (and it attractiveness to companies like Facebook and Google rumoured to be courting Twitter) is in the aggregate. At the individual, DMO or small business level I see Twitter as a complement to all other marketing tools in the mix. I will write an assessment of Twitter in a future post soon.

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13) Impossible to concentrate with so many channles of interactivity interrupting everything - relevance is vital, once again. True. Goes almost without saying. The explosion of channels, tools, apps, etc., requires an effort from consumers to filter out annoying things. This is one of the reasons I am a bit turned-off from Facebook. Many of the apps on Facebook are very intrusive and "force" users to annoy their friends and connections by sending all kinds of invitation to all kinds of quizes, contests, etc., that for some of us are a bit of a waste of time.

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17) Most Destination Management Organization (DMO's) are totally inadequate to meet the challenges of the future. I don't agree with Prof Buhalis on this one. First, I think he does not understand DMO's very well (BTW I believe the initial M is for marketing not management). I will agree that many DMO's are indeed inadequate to meet the challenges of the future. But there are many destination that are doing great things in the digital space and also offline. At Canada-e-Connect we learned about Tourisme Montreal's digital strategy for 2009 and everyone at the conference was very impressed with it. Sweden's Community of Sweden social networking site is a success. VisitLasVegas is another DMO that has been doing very innovative Web 2.0 marketing.

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18) Only agile desinations as presented by bahamas.com Minister of Tourism and Aviation for the Bahamas, Vincent VanderPool-Wallace, will use innovation and eTourism for destination strategic advantage. Agree with the "only agile assertion," but Bahamas is not the only DMO doing good work in this space.

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20) VisitBritain takes 202 bookings per month!!! What is the return on investment on that? VisitScotland nationalised their booking service company whilst Tiscover was fully privatised and purchased by HRS.com. The jury's still out as to whether tourism board websites can successfully offer bookings direct to consumer. Some Canadian DMO's have indicated that their booking numbers are very good (although I've never seen specifics).

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23) Increasingly virtual worlds and immersive technology (developed in gaming and military applications) will be critical in marketing and cultural heritage representation. Not very much is said or written about regarding digital games and immersive technologies vis a vis eTourism, but it is an area with incredible potential. However, in order to be successful in this area, tourism businesses and destinations must be very creative (going beyond placing ads in a virtual world a la Second Life or within a Wii game), perhpas develop original games that promote the destination while providing fun to the users (and perhaps even an additional revenue stream for the DMO).

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24) We need to think differently and strategically as well as use the digital tools to raise our game to the global challenges. Couldn't agree more. But change is hard and it takes time. The purpose of the Canada-e-Connect eTourism Strategy Conferences is precisely to foster new thinking, strategic thinking in our industry vis a vis Tourism and eTourism. However, I have noticed that many in the industry resist change and while there is progress in the digital marketing space (e.g. Tourism Montreal, Tourisme Quebec and the CTC are working on very interesting projects in the space) inertia is very strong and we are not moving as fast as other competitors.

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To read the Travolution post clic here: "24 things to think about if you are involved in online travel."

Regards

Jaime Horwitz