High loonie + cuts to CTC + increase cross border allowances for Canadians = tough summer for Canadian Tourism

Finance Minister, the Hon. Jim Flaherty, tabled the Federal Government's budget 2012 and it's not very good for the 600,000+ Canadians that work in the tourism industry (investments in Quebec notwithstanding - more on that in my next post).

1 - according to the Tourism Industry Association of Canada - the CTC will see a small cut to it's budget this year, but a substantial cut of $14.2 million in 2013/2014. The CTC is underfunded as it is, so this does not bode well for Canada's tourism profile internationally. Without sustained and predictable funding, it is very difficult to plan long term for the benefit of the Canadian Tourism Industry.

2 - The Canadian dollar will continue to hover at parity with the US greenback for the foreseeable future and this is not good news for Canadian Tourism. With so many new destinations for travelers to choose from and weak US and European economies, a high dollar puts a lot of pressure on margins and many Canadian tourism businesses just can't compete on price.

3 - The Federal Budget raises duty free limits for cross-border travelers in effect giving the US tourism industry a big gift. Canadians returning from abroad can now spend $200 in a 24 hour period and $800 on a 48 hour trip without paying taxes on their purchases. Put that together with a high loonie and American cross-border marketing and you have a great incentive for Canadians to spend their money across the border, money they will not spend at Canadian tourism destinations.

What to do? Canadian tourism must continue to focus on differentiation and creative marketing. I anticipate a barrage of marketing messages targeting Canadians to encourage them to travel within Canada this year.

Comments? Advice? Rants?

GoMedia Canada in Toronto - where is the CTC going? Musings on Canadian Tourism

I did not attend all of Go Media Canada's sessions or meetings. After all, the event is focused on international (traditional) media. But that is changing. This year Go Media reached out to important bloggers and influencers like Kim Mance of Go Galavanting and founder of TBEX. And furthermore Go Media also had the open marketplace for local media (to which I was invited). I must clarify that while Canada en Español could be considered "local media," my digital media properties have always been designed to inform and entertain foreign audiences. 90% + of Canada en Español's online visitors live outside of Canada.

I only attended three things at Go Media, the Tourism Toronto reception at the magnificent Royal Conservatory of Music (great job Andrew and Company), the Go Media Open Marketplace for local media, and the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership's Taste of Ontario at the Distillery District (Boiler Room Restaurant) - good party (where I had a great conversation with Mexican media folks). As many other events that TIAC organizes or manager, I must say that my experience was very good. At the open marketplace I did have an opportunity to speak to a few media relations professionals from destinations I have never been too and that I would like to cover in the future. I spoke to Jillian of Travel Manitoba about Churchill and the Hudson's Bay; spoke to Jenny and Anastasia of the new Jasper Tourism organization; had a brief chat with Amber from Tourism Vancouver (not that I need to visit there, I know Van quite well, but it was nice to say hello); and Miles and Ellen of the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association. This last destination - Thompson Okanagan is an area that I am sure will be of much interest to my audiences. I think it will be one of the hottest destination in Canada in the very near future (and it's not doing badly at all at the moment).

I also had a very good chat with Elyse Mailhot, Travel Media Relations Manager at the CTC. It was interesting to hear about the change in direction the CTC is taking, moving away from advertising and focusing more on social media, not necessarily as a creator of content and initiator of conversations, but rather as an enabler and facilitator. This direction is partly the result of having to deal with insufficient funding going forward that precludes the organization from investments in advertising. Some people might think that advertising does not work any longer. That's not true. What doesn't work any longer is bad, lazy, complacent cookie-cutter advertising. Advertising today is merging with entertainment, infotainment, gaming and other tools. And most importantly, advertising today must be honest. The days of "there's a sucker born everyday" are gone.

I am a big supporter of a strong CTC, and I hope that the Tourism Association of Canada does a better job of lobbying the government to support a strong, well funded Canadian Tourism Commission - for one thing we should impose a Travel Promotion Fee on international visitors like many other countries do (including the US), with which we can fund the CTC. Having said that, I also propose stronger ties between the private tourism sector and the CTC. One of the issues I have with the CTC is that because of its bureaucratic nature it is sometimes too slow to act and because of its governmental ties it is risk averse when it comes to advertising and communications. As Kim Mance said at Canada-e-Connect 2010 in Montreal last January when I asked her "what should Canada do to raise its profile in the US (and in the world for that matter)?" "Make more noise."

Jaime Horwitz Rodriguez

Past Chair Canada-e-Connect eTourism Stratgy

Cactus Rock New Media Ltd.

The Canadá en Español Network

Canada-e-Connect to feature two Marketing magazine award-winners

This just in from the Tourism Industry Association of Canada:

Canada-e-Connect to feature two Marketing magazine award-winners: Sid Lee and Canadian Tourism Commission to provide prize-worthy insight at CEC

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Marketing, Canada’s leading advertising and media magazine, named two organizations with significant connections to Canadian tourism as recipients of its highly-coveted and prestigious National Marketing Awards.

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In its highly-anticipated and influential awards issue released earlier this week, the magazine selected Montréal-based agency Sid Lee as the Marketing Agency of the Year, while the Canadian Tourism Commission was named as the Marketer of the Year.

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And because TIAC aims to showcase the best of the tourism industry at the Canada-e-Connect conference, it stands to reason that both of these award-winners were already scheduled to appear at the 2010 edition of Canada’s premier e-tourism event this January in Montréal.

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“Sid Lee is known for pulling, pushing and simply playing with the industry's traditional definitions of creativity,” wrote Marketing’s Jeremy Lloyd. "Though many agencies are trying to work their way deeper into client operations to do more than straightforward advertising, Sid Lee has never been afraid to shun advertising in favour of retail design, product creation or, as it recommended to Tourisme Montreal, drop all traditional advertising to focus on online and social media outreach."

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Bertrand Cesvet joined Sid Lee in 1997 and led its transformation from a fledgling graphic design shop into one of Canada’s most dynamic creative services agencies. Cesvet will give Canada-e-Connect’s opening keynote presentation on January 27, 2010 at 10:00, and will share some of the ideas and concepts he developed for the book Conversational Capital which he co-authored with his Sid Lee colleagues Tony Babinski and Eric Alper.

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The Canadian Tourism Commission was also acknowledged for its efforts in online and social media. "In the past few years, a lot of marketers have experimented with social media and user-generated content in their marketing. But in our opinion, few have done it so well as the CTC," said Rebecca Harris, co-managing editor of Marketing.

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In particular, the magazine profiled the CTC’s successful Locals Know campaign, which showcased little-known yet enticing destinations across Canada and encouraged travellers to report back to share their memorable experiences. “What impressed us the most was CTC's groundbreaking social media strategy, which included videos showcasing travellers' real experiences,” Harris wrote.

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The CTC’s Lesly Braby will detail her organization’s social media experience in a plenary session, Thursday January 28 at 16:15 during Canada-e-Connect 2010. Lesly will describe how the CTC creates and distributes content on social media channels, what challenges they have encountered, and what they have learned along the way.

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For more information on Marketing's 2009 awards, please click here.

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Join us at Canada-e-Connect 2010 Register at www.canadaeconnect.com

www.tiac.travel

Psycographic segmentation in Canadian Tourism

Canadian DMOs as I suppose DMOs everywhere are spending a lot of money researching consumer and travel behaviour, their demographics and psycographics, their online habits and many other attributes. The Canadian Tourism Commission, for example, devised a segmentation tool called the Explorer Quotient that classifies people as traveller types. The EQ is basically a psycographics and lifestyle segmentation tool. There are other tools and ways of segmenting consumers, all of which may be valid and helpful. However, psycographic segmentation has its limitation and cannot be considered the be all and end all of marketing. One of the issues with this kind of segmentation is that people are constantly changing, their circumstances change, their different life stages force them to change. You can surmise this by examining your own life and that of people close to you. For example, my EQ is Free Spirit, one of the highest yielding tourist types. But I am also a Cultural History Buff and a Rejuvenator. I don't have the resources to prove this, but my sense is that most travellers may be one or another type depending on the circumstances, the mood and their financial resources. While I prefer to travel as a Free Spirit (luxury accomodations, the best of the best), I can't always afford it. I might sacrifice luxury for a cultural experience, which I've done on many occasions, and I every year my family and I try to take a Rejuvenating vacation. When I took the EQ questionnaire a few years ago, it turned out I was a Free Spirit. I often get marketed to as a Free Spirit even though I may feel like a Cultural History Buff or a No Hassle Traveler (which I definitely am as well).

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In conclusion, while segmentation tools are very important, one must keep in mind that people are not as easy to classify as plants. In the era of instant direct communication one-to-one, one-to-many it is critical to listen to travelers and be ready to respond with the right message at the right time so whenever a traveler expresses Free Spirit desires or No Hassle Traveler needs, you'll be ready to address their wishes with the right offer.

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Happy travels,

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Jaime

Canada top of mind among Mexican travellers, but less competitive.

"The spirit is willing, but the wallet may be weaker. That’s the message from the latest Global Tourism Watch report for Mexico, released by the Research department of the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC). Canada boosted its performance on a number of unaided indicators in 2008, making it the No. 1 destination brand in Mexico in those criteria: destination awareness, advertising awareness and destination consideration." CTC

The Canadian Tourism Commission conducted the survey for its latest report on Mexico in 2008 so the effects of the Global Recession, the H1N1 scare, and mostly Canada's visa imposition do not show in the results. What I have observed in the last several months via my network of websites, my tour operator client in Mexico and the continuing growth of the CanadAmigos Social Networking site where I have direct contact with a large number of people is that Canada is still a desirable destination for Mexicans, albeit a more expensive one. One of the byproducts of the visa imposition to Mexicans is that their travel to Canada went up in cost anywhere from 5% to 10% or more (short term visits like a long weekend escape may not be worth their while now). This has to do with the cost of obtaining a tourist visa (temporary resident). A single entry visa costs CAD $75 per person (multiple entry visas cost $150 per person). If a couple buys a package that cost them $1,100 per person before the visa, they now have to pay 6.8% more for the same package (not counting any courier costs, etc.) While many people were able to switch dates for their trips to Canada the first week after the imposition (July 15th), I know that many changed their plans and chose to go to the States instead. At the present time, Canada has become less competitive in Mexico vis a vis the US and other destinations like Spain and South America.

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Jaime

Canada-e-Connect in Review - Connexions-e-Canada

As Chair of the Advisory Committee, I had well over one thousand emails related to Canada-e-Connect eTourism Strategy 2009 by the time the conference started last Wednesday evening with a networking cocktail reception sponsored by TripAdvisor. I did not keep count of phone calls and conference calls but there were many. But all the time and effort put into this edition of the conference was worth it, if comments I've received already about the conference are any indication (e.g. many "it was a great conference !!" comments).

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While the conference is still fresh in my mind, I thought of writing a brief overview of my impressions of it.

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Given the economic atmosphere we are living in these days, it was rather gratifying to see a decent turn out for the conference (over 200 attendees).

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Not only did we have a good turn out but the quality of attendees was also very good, meaning, we had emarketers and decision makers from all areas of Canada attend plus representatives from many very innovative digital marketing companies.

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I think the big theme or motif, to borrow a term from the music world, was the area of social media and content independent of delivery channel (see Dr Ian Fenwick's video at the end of this post).

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For me there were many highlights during the conference. Most of our speakers were excellent particularly the keynote and luncheon speakers who provided some anchoring, some focus on the strategic nature of the conference:

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1. Dr. Ian Fenwick, an experienced consultant and academic in business provided an objective overview of the state of Marketing and Digital Marketing as well as where it may be going in the future with a clear, articulate and sometimes humorous presentation which included examples from around the world (see video). I strongly recommend his book DigiMarketing.

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2. Diane Clarkson, a brilliant analyst from Forrester research, brought home the issue of custiomer service, of making sure that we make our customers, guests, feel valued in this era of Travel and Tourism 2.0 when complaints or compliments can and are posted to the web in seconds. Her clear and engaging presentation was definitely on the money.

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3. Joe Buhler of Buhlerworks and analyst for PhoCusWright reminded DMO's about staying current, about looking ahead and try to lead as oppose to follow when it comes to innovation in the digital space. He made the point that many a time DMO's are reactive to what's going on in the space and therefore are always at risk of playing catch-up. For example, as DMO's are now incorporating (or some of them are at any rate) social media capabilities to their strategies, the eTravel private sector is already somewhere else providing new innovations in trip planning as the market of consumers/and travelers moves from "finding the best deal" to "finding the perfect travel experience" (e.g. Kayak vs NileGuide; Expedia vs. TravelMuse.)

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4. Rob Hughes from Brewster talked about VacationsCanadaTV, a great example of innovative canadian tourism digital marketing grounded in solid strategic insight.

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5. Greg Klassen VP Marketing for the Canadian Tourism Commission gave an impressive presentation of what the CTC is doing in the space, where it is going and how it will leverage the Olympics for the benefit of the entire country. He showed us examples of CTC initiatives like the Influencer Program for the Mexican Market, which I really liked. By the way, Walid Salem, Executive Director of eMarketing for the CTC, who was one of our panellists and moderators made very good points in the sessions he participated. It bears mentioning that Walid and his team are working on great inititatives that will help canadian DMO's and businesses take advantage of the immense work the CTC is doing behind the scenes. He encouraged everyone (as I do now here) to visit the CTC's Corporate site and take a look at the Canada Brand kit.
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5. Ted Souder of Google (head of Industry Travel Mid West). Ted is a vey engaging man (named "25 most extraordinary minds in sales and marketing" by HSMAI in 2006). I was fortunate to meet him the night before his presentation when a group of us were having a drink at the InterContinental Toronto Centre's bar. His presentation was not only fun but very informative. He talked about the 6 megatrends that influence Google, from Moore's law to the long tail to the wisdom of the crowds. Definitely a highlight of the conference and something to think about going forward.

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5. Terry O'Reilly. Terry is a legend in Canadian marketing who will be officially inducted into the Canadian Marketing Hall of Legends this coming week. He is the founder of Pirate Radio and TV and creator of the CBC program the Age of Persuasion. Terry's presentation, I think, was a great way to end the conference. His topic, "Ideas Move Mountains," reminded everyone that it does not matter what vehicle or technology is used to market a product, a service or a destination if your idea is weak. Terry provided us with numerous examples of BIG (not necessarily expensive) IDEAS in marketing and digital marketing.

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As for concurrent sessions and panel presentations, the conference covered the major aspects of eTourism strategy from eMarketing (don't target, engage), to Mobile Strategies and Social Media. There was a palpable strong interest in blogging, forums, twitter and social media, but many speakers, including Ted Souder, kept bringing up the fact that mobile marketing and communications will continue to grow and that mobile will not only be ubitquitous in the future but it may become the number one way for consumers to use the Web. As for Social Media (panel in which I presented http://www.canadamigos.com/ as an example of niche social media marketing), it was clear that most panellists agreed that tourism businesses must have a social media strategy (IHG is doing a great job at this) if they want to remain relevant and competitive. This does not mean that you must go out and launch a social networking site, but you must join and participate in the conversation via the most appropriate social media platforms for your organization.

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I do want to make a special mention of Tourisme Montreal. Emmanuelle Legault and Carmen Ciotola gave impressive presentations about Tourisme Montreal's strategy in digital marketing and distribution. Prior to seeing these presentations, my favourite Canadian DMO vis a vis digital marketing was HelloBC (under William Bakker's direction), but now, it is Montreal. I look forward to following Tourisme Montreal's progress this year and beyond and encourage all in our industry to do the same.

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Overall, and given the current economic climate, I am very pleased with the success of Canada-e-Connect 2009. I did not go over each and every panellist/speakers' participation on this post for brevity's sake, but I will blog about all of them as time goes by (thank you all). I look forward to future Canada-e-Connect conferences. Stay in touch and connect by joining the Canada-e-Connect 2009 Facebook page and the Canada-e-Connect 2009 LinkedIn Group. Visit the Canada-e-Connect 2009 website if you want more info on the speakers bios.

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Visit the Tourism Industry Association of Canada website to keep up to date on industry initiatives and the most important canadian tourism industry events throughout the year.

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Dr. Ian Fenwick, speaking about Digital as today's standard gauge in marketing.

Jaime Horwitz MBA
Chair Advisory Committee Canada-e-Connect 2009

President Cactus Rock New Media Ltd.

The Canada en Espanol Network

Canadamigos Social Network

Canadian Cuisine--Created by Americans??

Canadian Brand Under Attack!!

The story in today's New York Times highlight a food fight between the CTC, and a restaurant group in Bryant's Park http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/nyregion/27bryant.html?ref=nyregion--however the real story for sensitive and and nationalistic Canadians like me ( if true) is the reference to CTC hiring a New York firm to design their new facility and menu--Where is the Canadian content?
The menu they have created is as follows according to the article......which features three-bean chili with bison meat, macaroni and cheese with Canadian cheddar and “maple leaf” cosmos.

How about Canadian Chefs.......were they involved??