Our combined background in politics and marketing naturally led us to get involved with various campaigns promoting tourism. As this series launches, we have just wrapped up Canada’s National Tourism Week, an initiative created to bring attention to the economic opportunities offered in the travel and tourism industries across the country. Many of our clients work in these industries, which means we spend a lot of our time promoting the value of tourism for communities around the country, as well as entire provinces and the country as a whole.

Value of Tourism campaigns involve social licensing around tourism development and funding. We create communications around these projects to advocate for the value they will add to the various stakeholders and communities involved. We work with local and provincial destination management organizations (DMOs) to make their respective publics understand the value of continued funding for their initiatives. This funding comes in various forms, such as taxation, or through grants or partnerships with the private sector. Whatever the source of the funding may be, the task of Value of Tourism campaigns is to show that the money channelled towards tourism is worthwhile and is creating value for the town, city or province in question.

In some cases, these projects involved the proposed construction of new public buildings designed to attract tourists to the region. These kinds of cases are very often decided by a public referendum, which means it becomes our job to convince voters to go to the polls and vote ‘Yes’ for the proposal. However, it isn’t always the public that needs to be convinced. Sometimes, we need to craft communications directed towards elected officials themselves, so that they can see the value of tourism projects and throw their support behind them.

Over the course of this podcast series, we will explain the issues surrounding tourism in greater depth and talk about some of the public relations and marketing strategies and tactics we use to advocate for the value of tourism. For more information on marketing, public relations and related topics, read our blog, listen to our podcast, or contact us.