Travel Currents: January 2013

2012 Year in Review

While the beginning of a new year is a great time to look ahead, it’s also the perfect time to look back. So here’s a snapshot of success stories, highlights and notable numbers from Travel Manitoba in 2012.

Leading Marketing Excellence

Our decision to join the Canadian Tourism Commission’s Explorer Quotient Family’ has given us and ultimately our tourism industry access to some of the most in-depth and insightful tourism research currently available to help us shape our marketing strategies. The Explorer Quotient, or EQ, is helping to shape our new brand, set to launch in 2014. See the update on our brand development process below.
We increased our social media efforts, bringing in consulting firm Think! Social Media to guide us and hiring our E-Marketing Coordinator. The results speak for themselves:
- Visits to What’s Hot increased 358% in 2012 from 2011, with visitors from the U.S., U.K., India, Germany, France, the Philippines and more. Remember, getting your experience or event on What’s Hot is free – so send it to us now!
- Visitors to Everything Churchill increased 248% in 2012, with dramatic increases in visitors from Japan (up 919%) and Mexico (up 1,025%).
- Since relaunching our fishing and hunting site, the average visit duration is 2:42 minutes. In 2012, Travel Manitoba redirected 6,315 online leads to 103 MLOA members.
- We have consistently added followers on Twitter, in December 2012 alone adding 695 new Twitter followers and making 754,000 impressions.
- Action on our Facebook page is reaching new heights – adding 656 new users who ‘like’ us on Facebook in just the last two months of the year. We love to share our industry’s posts – let’s work together to reach an even wider audience.
We had a total of 171 partners in 2012 who participated in our in marketing and advertising activities and whose contributions helped us reach our revenue targets.
Leads to partners from travelmanitoba.com increased 6.4% to reach 92,000, so make sure you get your ads and packages on our website.
Toba, our polar bear mascot, made his first public appearance at The Forks and went on seven more adventures at tourism attractions around Manitoba in 2012. He is so popular, Toba is completely booked for 2013 – act fast to get him to your attraction in 2014.

Strengthening Industry Relations

In 2012, we sought insight and feedback from our fish and hunt operators, our industry working with travel trade in international markets and from nrepresentatives from destination marketing organizations and regional tourism associations. Information gathered at these summits was used to help shape our short and long-term objectives. See below for information on the summits planned for the first half of 2013.
We shared the power and potential of EQ with industry at our Manitoba Tourism Conference, September 10 and 11, 2012.
We celebrated tourism champions, pioneers and leaders at the 14^th Annual Manitoba Tourism Awards by honouring 12 winners in 11 categories. This spring, watch for a call for nominations for the 15^th annual awards.
Colin Ferguson, our President and CEO, gave 20 presentations to a variety of audiences over the course of the year, sharing important messages about the power of tourism in contributing to Manitoba’s economy and Travel Manitoba’s role and objectives. If you’d like Colin to come and speak to your group or organization, please let us know.
With the cooperation and input of our fishing and hunting operators, we were able to complete an economic assessment of this province’s fishing and hunting sector – which spurs almost $470 million in spending by hunters and anglers. This, along with other research we conduct, is an important advocacy tool to share the value of tourism to Manitoba’s economy.

Reaching International Markets with Travel Media & Travel Trade

Our media relations team was once again hard at work bringing Manitoba tourism experiences to newspapers, magazines and online publications from around the world.
- Our Media Tour Program supported 78 media projects in total, including three Travel Manitoba hosted group media trips. Learn how you can participate in our Media Tour Program.
- Birgit-Cathrin Duval is a German travel writer who has been to Manitoba several times over the past 10 years. Her most recent trip in November 2012 brought her here for Churchill Wild’s Photo Safari at Seal River Heritage Lodge and to cover the first Polar Bear Marathon in Churchill. So far in just two short months, her trip has resulted in six articles, including in several major German newspapers.
Travel Manitoba hosted 33 companies on FAM tours to Manitoba. Be a part of our Featured Supplier Program to meet and work with FAM tour participants.
We had 406 appointments with travel companies through 14 sales missions and marketplaces in 2012.