[Video] In an effort to get more heads in hotel pillows and bums in restaurant seats, Tourism Victoria is reaching out and touching some of its key markets through the medium of brightly coloured phone booths.
The destination marketing organization is about to launch its Victoria Calling marketing campaign aimed to draw visitors from Calgary, Edmonton, Seattle and Vancouver,
The $400,000 venture will see a bank of British-style phone boxes installed in office buildings in Calgary and Edmonton, Sea-Tac airport in Seattle and in an as-yet-to-be-determined spot in Vancouver.
People who step into the booths will be prompted to pick up the handset and use a touchscreen pad to engage in a first-person experience played out on the screen to give them a taste of what Victoria has to offer. They get the option of a virtual trip for afternoon tea at the Fairmont Empress, a west coast hiking adventure, a night on the town at Veneto in the Rialto Hotel or an ocean adventure including fish and chips at Fisherman’s Wharf and whale watching.
The two-minute videos are shot from the viewer’s perspective and take them through every step of a daily adventure in the city.
“I really wanted to deliver an experience,” said Tourism Victoria director of marketing Trina Mousseau. “It’s much more than a static ad or billboard. It’s an experience the consumer can engage with.”
At the end of the video, the viewer is offered incentives — from $100 cash to be picked up at the Visitor Information Centre when they get to Victoria to discount prices on flights and hotel rooms for a trip to Victoria.
“It’s about driving the visitation economy and getting people on the ground spending money at our attractions, our restaurants and malls,” said Mousseau.
The phone booths are not passive in this promotion. At various times during the day, the phones will ring randomly, hoping to draw in passersby.
Anyone who answers will be connected to a Tourism Victoria representative through live video chat and awarded prizes that include hotel stays, dining experiences and cash.
“We are very excited about it because it is a strong call to action to book,” said Mousseau, noting the promotion also provides the destination marketing organization with real data that can be tracked. “Measureables are such a key thing, and with this I can tell how many people take the video tours, we have captured data [email addresses and postal codes[ for our database for the long-term and learned something about these people so we can send them more custom messages.”
Tourism Victoria CEO Rob Gialloreto said the campaign continues the momentum started last year. “We were pretty creative last year in those same markets and this builds on that,” he said. “And I really like the call to action. It’s about making a decision about coming here.”
Gialloreto said the campaign will play a big part in reaching the organization’s goals of 1.5 per cent tourism revenue growth for the year.
And while 2013 is off to a slow start in terms of hotel stays, Gialloreto said they “stand by our prediction ... that translates into 115 additional visitors every single day of this year and for the next three years.”
The booths will start April 1 in Calgary and move to Edmonton April 15. In both cities they will be placed in high-traffic office buildings. In June, the booths will be moved to Seattle for a month and to Vancouver in July.
The campaign will be supported by radio ads in Alberta as well as social and online media outlets. The first-person video tour will also be live on TourismVictoria.com and Tourism Victoria’s Facebook page.
