Ottawa Tourism reaching out to Indo Canadians and Indians abroad

Wilbur Sargunaraj is a YouTube celebrity, singer songwriter, producer from India who lives in Toronto when he's not in Tamil Nadu or touring performing his mix of hip-hop and Bollywood music with a strong touch of comedy. He has a following on YouTube (2.7 million upload views) and Facebook (14,000 fans). He visited Ottawa recently where, with support from Ottawa Tourism, he shot one of his auto-tuned videos, this one called "The Canada Song." He has a penchant for calling his tunes "The (filled in the blank) Song."

A propos our conversations about video and travel at Canada-e-Connect 2011, I think this is a great example of creativity in travel promotion using video. You may or may not like the video. What's important is that the audience for which the video is intended likes it. I am not Indian or Indo-Canadian so I cannot say with any certainty whether this video would make them want to visit Ottawa or not. But kudos to Ottawa Tourism for taking this risk, and most importantly for doing something to target a very specific segment of the travelling public (segmentation). I personally like the tongue-in-cheek nature of it, and I wouldn't be surprised if it goes viral to a certain extent. Apparently it's already doing very well in views. I will be interested in learning what the results in visits from Indians and Indo-Canadians is over the next 12 months.

Watch.

TripTelevision

TripTelevision is one of the companies from the group of innovators at the PhoCusWright Innovation Summit this past week. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to interview President and COO Kulin (Colleen) L. Strimbu (photo) about TripTelevision's technology during PhoCusWright. TripTelevision has developed a unique video player that is meant to be used as a sales tool and not just a player. Their video player can be customized to better address clients' needs. It can be used for online advertising by repurposing the video and, through its partnerships, TripTelevision offers an online distribution service. TripTelevision's video player began its life in the music industry and the technology won an technical Emmy from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. One of the neat features is TripTelevision services is post-production. Whether they shoot your video or you provide the footage they can cut it to appropriate lengths and incorporate the clips into the player itself. The viewer then can see one clip or any of the clips. The video supports advertising (you can quickly deploy high-quality, high-CPM video advertising campaigns in your content). I found the player very easy to use and see great potential for those canadian tourism organizations that may be considering deploying an online video or online TV strategy. From my conversation with Ms. Strimbu I gathered that the cost of investing in this technology is quite accessible to most tourism businesses and o rganizations. TripTelevision

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Jaime

TVTrip a video hotel search and booking website from Europe

TVTrip is a unique search engine for hotels. It is not the only website that is using video to showcase a hotel but it is the only one I've ever seen where video is at the centre of the business model. A few years ago this idea would not have worked (or worked very well) because of low speed Internet connections. But in today's YouTube era, video is the fastest digital tool/service (web and mobile). People want Video (from the Latin "I see" from the verb videre "to see."). We are a visual species and when it comes to travel planning the more we can see (provided we believe that what we see is authentic) the better. This is the TVtrip's unique selling proposition . With the cooperation of the hotels, they show you everything they can from the properties on their website (mostly European Hotels plus New York - while they do list hotels in Canada they have no video for these hotels yet).
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TVtrip was created in 2007 by travel and Internet experts with backgrounds in companies such as Expedia, Air France, Lufthansa, Microsoft and Lycos and is based in Paris, Munich and Brussels. I interviewed Marc Ruff, CEO and Co-Founder and Steve Stollerman VP North America. They indicated to me that the company is very interested in expanding their filmed hotels by adding Canadian cities' properties to the site. This should be of interest to Canadian hotels interested in European travelers because TVtrip has a broad user base in Canada's traditional inbound markets like the UK, France and Germany. In addition to the well produced and detailed videos, another aspect I liked about TVtrip is its multilingual capabilities. I hope they can go to Toronto in January to attend Canada-e-Connect. One possible problem with the model though is the videos' shelf life, e.g. what happens if a hotel remodels and redecorates its rooms or common areas. How long can the videos last before they become dated. A question I did not think to ask Marc and Steve, but I will via email and report back on this blog. See TVtrip here.

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Jaime

Fall is the Season to Remember. A Tribute to the Canadian Armed Forces.

The singer is my daughter Madison. We got this idea in the summer and shot in various places from Ucluelet to Ottawa. Obviously we would have wanted to include the Atlantic and the North, but we were on a tight budget (it's an amateur video after all).

Lest We Forget

Said good bye to Vancouver (best city in the world to live according to the Economist Intelligence Unit) with a day at the beach. Loved it.

My last day in Vancouver before returning to Toronto we spend at the beach in Kitsilano. I had a great time swimming in the ocean (a bit chilly, but really refreshing after 5 minutes in the water) and spending quality time with my sister (who lives in Burnaby), my best friend (married to my sister), my wife, daughter and my niece. I'm very happy to be home though. Home is home. I love to visit Vancouver, but I love to live in Toronto. By the way, the Economist Intelligence Unit's global city rankings placed Vancouver as 1st and Toronto as 5th best cities in the world to live. How about that? Melbourne, Vienna and Perth came in between the two Canadian cities. Montreal unfortunately did not make the top ten this time (merde!). We can do better Canada - Australia is eating our lunch (4 of the top 10 cities).

Cheers,

Jaime