Thumbs up for tnooz

Great site for tourism and etourism professionals. Congratulations to Kevin May, editor of tnooz. Kevin's experience in eTourism (travel, technolog, Internet, media) and his global connections in the space make tnooz a premier web destination for the tourism industry worldwide.

www.tnooz.com

Jaime Horwitz MBA
Co-chair Canada-e-Connect eTourism Strategy Conference Montreal 2010
www.canadaeconnect.com

in reference to: http://www.tnooz.com/author/editor/ (view on Google Sidewiki)

International inbound tourism to Canada in July took a big dive

Not surprisingly Mexican inbound tourism to Canada was down 39.4% in July compared to July of last year. This decline was directly related to Canada's imposition of visa restrictions on Mexican visitors on July 15. It will take some time for Mexican numbers to recover to pre-visa requirements. My best guess is two to three years provided we continue to market Canada in a creative, engaging and effective way to Mexicans, positioning the country as a premium destination. (There is a faint hope that the Government of Canada will implement reforms to the Refugee System in which case visa requirements for Mexicans might be lifted - at least that's what I infer from Prime Minister Harper's remarks after last August's NAFTA Summit in Guadalajara). Even with the visa issue, Mexico surpassed Japan by almost 30,000 visitors in the period from Jan to July.

-

So that's Mexico. But what about the rest of the world? Well, according to StatCan's International Travel: Advance Information Service Bulletin for July 2009, all markets where down, some significantly in July. Spain was an exception with growth of 1.5% (Greece and the Philippines also showed growth)

-

Compared to July 2008 these are the dismal figures for July 2009:

-

UK - down 19.5%

France - down 5.1%

Germany - down 1.5%

Australia - down 4.8%

Japan - down 35.4 %

China - down 17.8%

Hong Kong - down 24.5%

India - down 7.9%

-

For the period between January and July 2009 only the Philippines and SPAIN show growth. I am not sure why the Philippines shows growth, but for the first 7 months of this year Phillipines is up 13.5% (40,197). It may be mostly VFRs (visiting friends and family), but it would be interesting to find out what kind of visitors come from that country. As for SPAIN, it showed growth of 2.3% for the same period (40,075 visitors). For some time now, I have been saying that SPAIN can be a great market for Canada. I believe that with the right investment in marketing and trade relations, we could easily reach 200,000 to a quarter million Spaniards visiting Canada every year (just look up how many Spaniards visit New York City annually to get a better grasp on that country's potential). Spaniards, as you may know, do not require a visa to visit Canada as tourists (and it's very unlikely they will ever need one). When it comes to airlift, there aren't many direct flights between Spain and Canada, but there are multiple connections from Europe.

-

And the USA? Well, it just continues to slide. Visits from the US where down 11.3% in July compared to July 2008 (biggest declines were seen from same day Americans visitors (-24.6%) and Americans coming by bus (-23.8%)

-

Wishing you all a recovering Fall season and a come-back-from-behind 2010.

-

Jaime Horwitz

www.canadaenespanol.ca

Sept 16, 2009 a conversational capital day for Toronto

I like the term "conversational capital." My friend Carmen Ciotola of Tourism Montreal first mentioned it to me when she introduced me to the book by Bertrand Cesvet (with Tony Babinski and Eric Alper. The book is called Conversational Capital, but with a subtitle that reads "How to Create Stuff people love to talk about." Thought the book clearly presents a framework to analyze something (or someone) from a conversational capital perspective, "create stuff people love to talk about" is easier said than done.

-

Conversational Capital, according to the book refers to "a series of observations that can help generate and spread positive word-of-mouth." Examples in the book of brands/products/services that have generated enormous amounts of conversational capital are Cirque du Soleil, Apple, adidas, Red Bull, Schwartz's (smoked meat sandwich deli in Montreal). The book offers 8 attributes or engines of conversational capital, most of which must be present in your product, service, brand, artist or tourism attraction in order to create conversational capital. These engines are: Rituals, Initiation, Exclusive Product Offering, Over-delivery, Myths, Icons, Tribalism, Endorsement and Continuity. I won't go into detail about these engines here. Read the book in order to get the entire lesson. I am merely using Cesvet and friends' framework to talk about word-of-mouth (positive or negative) about a tourism destination and how difficult it is for destination tourism marketers to create word of mouth about their destinations, particularly cities.

-

In my opinion, a city's tourism board per se cannot really create conversational capital for its destination (Let me interject here and mention that the book's website - ConversationalCapital.com - has a section on conversations where the book's readers can interact and debate about conversational capital - unfortunately every time I clicked on this section the browser freezes and I have to reboot it). A city's conversational capital (except perhaps for Las Vegas, Dubai, NYC and Paris) is created by what happens in the city. The city itself is nothing without its events, its people and its architecture (architecture is something that happens - e.g. the ROM's Crystal Gallery, Gehry's renovation of the AGO, the OCAD building). And this brings me to what happened yesterday, September 16, 2009 in Toronto.

-

Three major events where happening at the same time last night in Toronto in and around the entertainment district. I drove into the downtown core to meet my wife because we had tickets to U2's 360 Tour concert at the Skydome (Rogers Centre for some, but for me it's always the Skydome). I heard on the radio what was going on downtown so I made a point to get downtown early. In addition to U2 performing, the Maple Leafs had their opening game at the ACC against the Boston Bruins and the Toronto International Film Festival had its ongoing shows and galas in the downtown core. Needless to say, the area was hopping. Front Street and side streets felt a little like New York City with people and cars everywhere. One could also feel the energy of hockey, music or film fans building with anticipation of their respective events. For tourism and tourism related businesses it was an outlier evening I'm sure. I saw line-ups at small coffee shops like Tim Horton, fast food places and restaurants along Front Street.

-

These three events provide more visibility to Toronto than any ad campaign could (unless of course, Toronto places an ad during the Super Bowl). The challenge for Toronto tourism marketers is how to harness and encourage the conversation in order to increase the conversational capital. One Google search for "U2 Toronto 2009" comes back with 1.3 million hits and change. A Twitter search for "U2 Toronto" comes back with pages and pages of related tweets (you have to tolerate many spammers' tweets though - one problem Twitter is wrestling with). A Google news search for "U2 in Toronto" gave up about 62 results, many of major media outlets that covered the concert. Similarly if you search for "Maple Leafs" or "Bruins" you will get many hits. And the Toronto International Film Festival? Well I'll save you the time you could spend on searches about TIFF. TIFF is the single Canadian event (cultural or otherwise) that towers among any other in media coverage. Two years ago a study was mentioned in the Toronto Star revealed that TIFF is by far more covered by the media than Bay Street and it's light years ahead of any other Canadian event ( a Google search for "Toronto International Film Festival" results in over 26 million hits).

-

When you look at the three events mentioned in terms of the engines converational capital all three have elements of all or most of the engines. A tourism marketer cannot create this. One of the tourism marketer's many obvjectives (but one at the top of my list) should be to look for those brands, events, personalities or businesses that create conversational capital about their destinations, support them and find ways to be a participant in the conversations and use them in the destination's marketing initiatives.

-

Regards (by the way, Bertrand Cesvet will be the opening keynote speaker at next year's Canada-e-Connect conference in Montreal).

-

Jaime Horwitz MBA

The 850 Race a crazy endeavour for a great cause. Support it.

The impact of Canada's imposition of visa restrictions on Mexican visitors in the middle of July has taken most of my time in recent weeks. It's been a very challenging summer to say the least. But I am an optimist and an entrepreneur. I am looking at Spain to pick up some of the shortfall. But that's another post.

-

Today I want to call your attention to a crazy but admirable idea, one of those that create conversational capital for a destination. One of my followers, whom I also follow on the micro-blogging service, is the eco lodge E'Terra Inn, an award winning eco friendly luxury estate in Ontario's Bruce Peninsula, by an "ancient coral reef known as the Niagara Escarpment next to the diamantine waters of Georgian Bay." E'Terra alerted me to the 850 Race, a fundraising event whose website introduces as follows: "Think about doing the impossible. Dream. Raise one million dollars to help kids in need. Impossible? How is this for impossible? Run a marathon. Run two marathons, back to back. No. That is not impossible. It may be painful. But not impossible. How about running two marathons a day for six days in a row? Starting to sound impossible? One last thing, let’s not do it on a road. Let’s do it off road on trails..." Now, I am a runner myself and would say have excercised regularly most of my life. I once ran the full Mexico City Marathon and in recent years I ran a half marathon at the Toronto Waterfron Marathon. I am aware of extreme sports and, of course we all know Terry Fox's story. But no matter how you spin it, running two marathons daily (84 kms) for six days does sound like an impossible (and dangerous) thing to attempt.

-

The 850 Race is a project in support of the Global Child Health Program which is the collective strategy for SickKids and partners in developing nations to address the Millennium Development Goal #4 - Reduce Child Mortality. David Battison and Brian Culbert are the men behind the 850 race. David, a well known coach in skiing circles, and Brian, an avid cyclist, are both avid extreme sports practitioners. Not the leisure runs I take around my home or in parks and cities wherever I travel. No, these guys don't excercise for health or fun reasons. They like crazy challenges. Apparently on day they were talking about coming up with new challenges and making a "bucket list." One of the items of the list was to run the entire Bruce Trail. Ah, but this not being enough of a challenge they thought "why not make it a race...in six days!" (my quotes).

-

And so David and Brian are running as I write this. I would have loved to at E'Terra near Tobermory this Friday to see them cross the finish line (thank you E'Terra for inviting me), but other commitments and my work precluded me from driving up there. Best of luck with your feet (and knees, and ankles, and backs) guys. Godspeed!

-

Please visit the 850Race website and support this worthy cause. Follow the race on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/the850race. Visit E'Terra's website to learn about this unique Inn in the Province of Ontario.

-

Jaime Horwitz

www.canadamigos.com

Twitter.com/jaimehorwitz

Canada's Best Theatre This Weekend in Quebec City

The Plains of Abraham in Quebec City will have the best show in Canada. Commemorating 250 of the battle that determined the future of North America and Canada. It will be an interesting display of partisan speeches, opinions, mixed with a little fact and fiction.

The ghosts of Wolfe and Montcalm will be drinking good French wine and strong British Ale arguing over who really won the war. See a selection of many of the best articles and blogs discussing the pre-Canada battle for North American supremacy.