Innovative Practices - Marketing Strategies
- Artist House Heritage Bed and Breakfast
Sicamous is located on the TransCanada Highway between Salmon Arm and Revelstoke on Shuswap Lake. The Artist's House Heritage Bed and Breakfast is situated on the CP Rail Hillside overlooking Shuswap Lake and the house was purchased by Victoria Simpson as a residence in 1989. As she stood on the deck overlooking the lake she declared, "I'm going to have an artists' retreat here one day." She opened the bed and breakfast in 2000.
- Clearwater Lake Lodge
Clearwater Lake Lodge and Resort is a year-round resort that is located on Clearwater Lake in the Chilcotin Region. The lodge is just over 3000 ft (1000 m) above sea level, 260 km west of Williams Lake and 205 km east of Bella Coola in Kleena Kleene on Chilcotin Highway 20. Clearwater Lake Lodge and Resort has been owned and operated since 1993 by Giesla and Bernward Kalbhenn. This diverse resort features 6 rooms in the main lodge, two cabins, one log-house chalet, and a few RV sites. Clearwater Lodge offers many outdoor activities for guests, such as canoeing and hiking; however, the lodge also has partnered with local guiding and recreation businesses to offer guests heli-hiking, horseback riding, ATV, and snowmobile experiences.
- Elysia Resort
Creating promotional material in a cost effective way without sacrificing quality was a concern for the Elysia Resort. Using a professional photographer can provide you with quality pictures that will get you noticed, but the upfront cost can be a large expense for small operators. Susan Barton started looking for alternate ways to get quality pictures to use in her promotional material.
- Go Girl Mountain Adventures and Base Camp
Go Girl Mountain Adventures was created to provide all women an opportunity to get back to nature or enjoy it for the first time. Groups of 6 women, or girls, can spend 3 or 6 days in the backcountry enjoying a basic adventure with Go Girl 101 or a more advanced adventure with Stick & Stones, Mrs. Jones.
Base Camp was developed to offer women an eco-tourism adventure as well as an education about wildlife, wilderness safety, and provide them with opportunities to gain new skills.
- FARMED: An alliance to bring about agritourism
The North Cariboo area is known for its popular historical sites, forestry and pockets of agriculture. The area becomes a popular spot for American RV’rs who are passing through on their way to Alaska and the city of Quesnel is now a stop for the Rocky Mountaineer Rail Tour. The area has seen a rise in Agritourism businesses which are essentially provided by farms or other agricultural businesses who have added tourism to diversify their income. Agritourism has been experiencing growth in BC despite the fact that the move can be quite challenging for new entrants. Switching from an Agricultural business to including tourism can create new challenges that are unique to tourism.
- Gold Country Community Society
The Gold Country Communities Society (GCCS) was first formed in response to the huge economic impacts that the opening of the Coquihalla Highway in the late 1980’s. The communities that formed GCCS were on the tips of the regional DMO’s such as Thompson-Okanagan Tourism Association and Cariboo-Chilcotin Coast Tourism Association and as a result they felt that many of the marketing campaigns conducted were not meeting their needs. GCCS focuses on marketing the Gold Country region and provides opportunities for members to participate in co-op advertising that better represents the area. It is important for rural areas to have well a DMO they feel represents them well because many of the businesses operate on comparatively limited budgets and have limited resources to put together effective marketing campaigns. An effective sub-regional DMO can help overcome these challenges.
- Merritt Marketing Group
Community marketing efforts are often handled by volunteers or off the corner of a person's desk. Though much effort goes into community marketing from these individuals there are other constraints on their time that may result in marketing that leaves room for improvement. By contracting a private firm to handle their community marketing efforts Merritt has eased the time constraints and also brought into play the marketing expertise of dedicated professionals.
- Sorrento Silent Auction
Being an unincorporated community, Sorrento does not have access to the financial resources for tourism development that other, incorporated communities have. Without financial resources, the community can not support a visitor information centre or its city beautification program. These two programs are important parts of any community's tourism strategy. In order for the community to benefit from tourism, it has to be clean and inviting. Having a visitor information centre will also provide visitors with information about what is available to them in Sorrento, to encourage them to stay in the community longer and produce more economic benefits to local merchants. Seeing that these two pieces of their tourism development plan are very important, the community leaders have had to look at un-conventional means of acquiring the financial resources that would help them fund a visitor information centre and their community beautification program.
- Rocky Mountain Trench Adventures (RMTA)
Many small businesses in tourism rely on fairly traditional marketing tactics to get the word out about their products and services. Traditional however, is not the approach taken by the young, ambitious staff of the RMTA. Together, they have been instrumental at overcoming the challenges of lack of awareness of Mackenzie as a destination in the minds of visiting markets. They have professionally mastered the art of promotion through a variety of TV shows, commercials, print media and custom made DVD's. RMTA has been featured on Snowmobiler Television on the Outdoor Life Network (OLN), on A Channel, Sled Trails TV show, as well as Garry Coopers Nice Fish TV series. SnowRiders West Canada Magazine has also featured RMTA and the community of Mackenzie as a world class recreation and outdoor destination.
- Alaska Highway House
Located in the heart of downtown Dawson Creek, the Alaska Highway House provides the rich historic quest of the building of the world famous Alaska Highway. The Alaska Highway House, which celebrated its grand opening on July 4, 2007, marked the completion of a three year project by Tourism Dawson Creek and the communities of the highway corridor. The Alaska Highway House encompasses 1000 square feet, and features the historic context of the highway and its remarkable wartime construction. A visitor friendly environment the Alaska Highway House provides interpretive displays including a reconstructed Quonset that features films and documentaries, a scale model of the 1942 Kiskatinaw Bridge, artifacts, photos, and illustrations that brings the highway story to life.
