A behind-the-scenes marketing program is educating and exciting local tourism staff about Vancouver area attractions so they can tell tourists, first-hand, what the city has to offer.
Now in its 11th year, the Tourism Challenge program provides a “passport” of free admission for participating tourist attractions, plus discounted hotel room and restaurant rates to employees of participating tourism organizations during April and May of every year.
Employees who manage to visit 15 participating sites during that period qualify for a year-long season’s “Privilege Pass,” which allows them and a friend virtually unlimited free access to tourist attractions plus continuing hotel and hotel restaurant discounts.
“It’s a very cool marketing concept and it’s been very, very effective for us and a huge part of the energy and the morale-boosting for the industry at the beginning of the year,” said Nancy Chilton, who co-ordinates the program.
Chilton said the program was dreamed up in 2001 by the Vancouver Attractions Group and the Vancouver Hotel Association, in partnership with Tourism Vancouver. The goal was to educate industry staff members so they could better promote the array of local attractions and destinations.
“One of our best resources is our frontline people because every day they’re touching some guest, some visitor,” she said.
Chilton noted that every employee at a participating partner is eligible for a passport. She said that servers at hotel and attraction restaurants are particularly well-placed to share their personal experiences of local attractions with guests.
“You think of a tourist having breakfast and flipping through a Vancouver Attractions Group brochure or trying to decide what to do and the person that comes over and pours their coffee says, ‘Oh my gosh, that is incredible, you’ve got to go there; I’ve done it, I’ve seen it – totally worth your time,’” she said.
Chilton said it’s hard to pin down the marketing impact of the program because, while many attractions do survey their guests, the Tourism Challenge didn’t take steps to measure its impact from its inception. But there are signs that the program has been effective.
Chilton said the program has doubled its tourist attractions to 41 since it started, and also includes hotels, tourism information centres and taxi companies. The attraction list include sites as far away as Whistler and Hope, and covers Vancouver’s whole repertoire of go-to sites, such as Grouse Mountain, the Vancouver Aquarium and Capilano Suspension Bridge. This year it will gain the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at the University of British Columbia and Mountain View Cemetery.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had anybody leave the program,” she said, noting that she now gives out 17,000 passports, up from 7,000 in 2001. “It only ever expands.”
Capilano Suspension Bridge vice-president of sales and marketing Sue Kaffka said the program is one of the best marketing initiatives the attraction has participated in.
“We do a lot of surveying and certainly with this program we saw that there were more referrals from info centre staff and hotel staff and concierges,” she said. “So yes, it’s something that keeps that awareness very high, which is very, very important for us.”
Kaffka added that the program also helps with staff morale and team-building.
“We have a very young seasonal staff that come in that really embrace the program,” she said. “They go to see other attractions and tourism businesses and see how they operate and it’s a fun activity for them and it makes them more aware and it makes them feel prouder of the industry.”
Walt Judas, Tourism Vancouver’s vice-president of marketing communications and member services, noted that while tourists come and enjoy Vancouver’s attractions, he often jokes that 95% of Vancouver locals never experience all the city has to offer.
“Visitors have gone everywhere and yet we haven’t,” he said. The Tourism Challenge, he said, is a way for locals to go out and have those experiences, and then pass them onto visitors.
Like Kaffka, he emphasized that the program has proved to be both a useful marketing approach and a morale booster for a hard-working industry.
“People work hard and want to continue to be enthused about the city in which they live, work and play, and this is a nice perk if you will as part of being in an industry that’s growing and certainly one of the strongest industries in the province,” he said. “So it’s a way to reward people and to motivate them at the same time.”