Creative ideas help boost summer sales

Summit panel members, L to R, Bryson Forbes, Alison Hermanson and Dorothy Dowling

By Chris McGregor

TORONTO—In an effort to boost its membership sales, the Canadian Automobile Association has started offering member benefits to cyclists in Vancouver. The city has an active and avid cycling community, so it made sense to offer the same perks to the cyclist as a motorist. Now, if a cyclist gets a flat on Hastings Street, a CAA technician will show up driving an environmentally-friendly vehicle to change the tire.

That’s just one of the creative suggestions being used to get travel industry operators through the tough times of 2009.

The consensus among panelists at the recent Leisure Travel Summit in Toronto is that if hotel and tourism operators can get through this year, the travel market should show signs of rebounding. However, hotel operators shouldn’t expect to be able to raise their prices back to normal market rates until 2010.

“The offers out there are incredible this summer,” said Alison Hermanson, executive vice-president association and club services with the Canadian Automobile Association, and one of the Summit panel participants.

“Prices are still down, but I see business coming back. If you are ever going to travel, now is the time to do it.”

Christopher Jones, vice-president of public affairs with the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, agrees that this is a challenging time for the travel industry.

“We need to get the government to recognize that meetings and travel is an important economic driver,” Jones said.

The panelists tossed out buzzwords like opportunity, turbulent, value and, Jones’ made up word “yaycation”, as in ‘yay, I can afford a vacation,’ to describe the 2009 tourism season with a mix of optimism and cautiousness.

“People are cutting back in other areas, because they want the money to go on vacation.  Vacations may be shorter, but people will take them,” Jones said.
 
Dorothy Dowling, senior vice-president of marketing and sales for Best Western International, believes mid-market hotels are the ones to benefit the most this summer and fall as travellers want value for their dollar.

“Customers are looking for value and suppliers are providing it. Loyalty points use and redemption is up at Best Western,” Dowling said.

“Occupancy is coming back but prices are still depressed.”

More than ever, hotel operators need to find their target markets and learn the best way to reach them, either through conventional advertising, or social media outlets like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Best Western has boosted its advertising budget by 25 per cent and has taken out ad space on GPS units, mobile phones and Smart Phone applications to send consumers messages about Best Western hotels, based on where they’re travelling.

Dowling admits that while social media is a great way to connect with younger travellers, that is not the market they want to reach, so conventional mass media television advertising is still important.

As well, social media like Best Western’s Twitter account is tough to monitor, and it’s hard to make sense of the company’s followers to create useful information, Dowling said.
Hermanson said social media is a great option for companies that can’t afford the mass media route, as it is easy to target the messages.

“Social media is expensive and youth love it,” she said, as those people are a tourism industry’s future customer.

Bryson Forbes, Best Western blogger and an expert on the Canadian travel scene, said hotel operators should always offer the lowest price for rooms on the company’s website.
He said new passport rules requiring everyone crossing the border to hold one in order to get back into their home country makes it expensive for a family of four to travel to Canada or the United States.

Jones said the travel industry is lobbying to have the requirements for getting a new Canadian passport every five years changed to every 10 years in order to lessen the cost.
“The rubber tire market is not coming to Canada. It’s down to 1970s levels because of gas prices. Canada is a more expensive destination and there is no GST reduction for visitors anymore,” Jones said.