(Originally published in TOURISM)
Tourisme Québec's advertising and promotional partnerships manager is Gilles Parent, and these days he takes some pleasure from looking at the numbers racked up by Tourisme Montréal. “They reveal a very interesting pulse on current performance,” Parent says. “If we compare Montréal in July 2006 to Montréal in July 2007, we observe right away that nearly 19,000 more nights were booked. This suggests that despite all prognoses, there is a 4.3% increase compared to last year, which is rather significant.”
Parent suspects the major events hosted by Montréal have played a huge role. “There are the Grand Prix of Canada, the Montréal International Jazz Festival, and the Just For Laughs Festival. We had the first NASCAR race in Canada, which was a huge success. There has been an increase in European visitors as well as Mexican visitors (thanks to two daily flights with Mexicana and Air Canada). We invested in the Mexican market two years ago and we are now reaping the rewards. So we are happy.”
Like other jurisdictions, Quebec is seeing fewer American travellers, he notes. Parent’s team is targeting households with revenues of more than $120,000 in that market. “We are hoping our campaign evaluation will confirm that the decline in numbers from the US will be offset by our greater emphasis on these higher-yield travellers.”
Parent says his team also worked hard in the Ontario market, through initiatives among ethnic communities like Hispanic consumers. “For the first time, we used Spanish-language media; we also worked with Portuguese, Greek and Italian-language media, inviting these communities in the Greater Toronto area to come to Quebec. Nobody ever bothered doing that before.”
Parent says a key development has been the call for proposals issued by his department asking stakeholders to come forward with projects. “We committed to enter partnerships with them on a 50:50 basis. We ended up with 26 different files totaling $4 million in value targeting markets outside Quebec only. We worked with the Laurentians and with organizations like Kéroul (a non-profit group which promotes and develops wheelchair accessible tourism).”
Earlier in the season, attractions like Parc Safari were reporting an increase in visitors from Ontario and the northeastern US. “We invested heavily in web marketing using streaming technology to attract over one million visitors a month to our website. We also got into the famous AAA TourBooks, but instead of advertising in the Québec TourBook, we got into the TourBooks for our neighbouring states (New York and New England), and Ontario. When users open the book, they come across a four-colour, ten-panel, accordion-style piece on Quebec, suggesting to readers: ‘you are so close to Quebec, why not come to see us as well.’”
Tourisme Québec's advertising and promotional partnerships manager is Gilles Parent, and these days he takes some pleasure from looking at the numbers racked up by Tourisme Montréal. “They reveal a very interesting pulse on current performance,” Parent says. “If we compare Montréal in July 2006 to Montréal in July 2007, we observe right away that nearly 19,000 more nights were booked. This suggests that despite all prognoses, there is a 4.3% increase compared to last year, which is rather significant.”
Parent suspects the major events hosted by Montréal have played a huge role. “There are the Grand Prix of Canada, the Montréal International Jazz Festival, and the Just For Laughs Festival. We had the first NASCAR race in Canada, which was a huge success. There has been an increase in European visitors as well as Mexican visitors (thanks to two daily flights with Mexicana and Air Canada). We invested in the Mexican market two years ago and we are now reaping the rewards. So we are happy.”
Like other jurisdictions, Quebec is seeing fewer American travellers, he notes. Parent’s team is targeting households with revenues of more than $120,000 in that market. “We are hoping our campaign evaluation will confirm that the decline in numbers from the US will be offset by our greater emphasis on these higher-yield travellers.”
Parent says his team also worked hard in the Ontario market, through initiatives among ethnic communities like Hispanic consumers. “For the first time, we used Spanish-language media; we also worked with Portuguese, Greek and Italian-language media, inviting these communities in the Greater Toronto area to come to Quebec. Nobody ever bothered doing that before.”
Parent says a key development has been the call for proposals issued by his department asking stakeholders to come forward with projects. “We committed to enter partnerships with them on a 50:50 basis. We ended up with 26 different files totaling $4 million in value targeting markets outside Quebec only. We worked with the Laurentians and with organizations like Kéroul (a non-profit group which promotes and develops wheelchair accessible tourism).”
Earlier in the season, attractions like Parc Safari were reporting an increase in visitors from Ontario and the northeastern US. “We invested heavily in web marketing using streaming technology to attract over one million visitors a month to our website. We also got into the famous AAA TourBooks, but instead of advertising in the Québec TourBook, we got into the TourBooks for our neighbouring states (New York and New England), and Ontario. When users open the book, they come across a four-colour, ten-panel, accordion-style piece on Quebec, suggesting to readers: ‘you are so close to Quebec, why not come to see us as well.’”
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