Canadian travel adventures and TV exposure form a dream ticket for Chinese travellers in CTC’s buzz-building promotion.
2013-03-28 — /travelprnews.com/ — Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place? The China office of the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) has just unveiled the second season of its “Canada, You can be a Star” promotion.
Wannabe Canadian adventurers must answer “Why choose me to be a Canadian Explorer?” with eye-catching text, images and video. During the course of 2013, six lucky sets of Chinese travellers—ranging from families and groups of friends to honeymooners—will be selected to take a trip to a different region of Canada. Canadian travel experiences drawn from CTC’s Canadian Signature Experiences (CSE) will be the stars of the show.
Each group will then take top billing in a second 26-part TV series on China’s Travel Channel; the first was a smash hit, drawing 1.5 million viewers per episode. There will also be daily three-to-five-minute video clips that people can view on CTC’s Chinese consumer website and Weibo page. The travellerswill also blog about their Canadian experiences daily with a mix of text, images and videos.
The promotion’s media coverage will be further boosted by the presence of two print journalists on each of the trips, as well as the Travel Channel series being available on Yuoku, PPTV and Iqiyi. The promotion generated a lot of positive conversations about Canada on Chinese social networks Renren, Douban and Sina-Weibo in 2012, and the expectation is for more of the same in 2013.
Partnering CTC for the promotion are Tourisme Québec, Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation, Travel Alberta, Tourism British Columbia, Travel Manitoba and Northwest Territories Tourism. Negotiations are ongoing with non-traditional partners to join the campaign as it unfolds.
“Our ‘Canada, You can be a Star’ promotion targets the growing number of big-spending independent Chinese travellers,” says Derek Galpin, CTC-China managing director. “Building off the success of last year’s work, we want to create increased awareness of and interest in the provinces and territories around Canada that have been off the radar of Chinese consumers.”