Ontario Culture Days’ Departure Lounge  |   Episode 3: Marketing Tourism

Transcript

[INTRO MUSIC]

[Shawn Newman]

Hello! Welcome to the Ontario Culture Days’ Departure Lounge, an audio course podcast designed to teach you about the ins and outs, and the trends and pitfalls of cultural tourism in Ontario. I am your host, Shawn Newman speaking to you from Tkaronto.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt devastating blows to the arts and culture sectors, as well as tourism. And now, two years in, we are seeing leaders from both industries coming together in new and innovative ways as they work toward recovery and rebuilding. This audio course, produced by Ontario Culture Days, is one way that we hope to support collaboration between these sectors, and to close the gaps between to them.

You might think that gaps between the tourism and the arts and culture sectors seems odd, and we agree! But there are fundamental differences in how these sectors work, even though they have so much in common. Throughout this series, we’ll explore the ideas at the core of cultural tourism, connect these concepts to the arts, and hear from professionals on the ground.

This podcast on cultural tourism is geared towards arts and culture sector workers and organizations and is designed as an audio course. But we certainly invite everyone to listen and learn with us! This podcast, its transcripts and the resources referenced are all available on the Ontario Culture Days website. Whether you are new to thinking about or working with Ontario’s tourism sector, or feel like you want an inspirational refresher, Ontario Cultures Days’ Departure Lounge has something for you.

In this episode, we’re going to talk about marketing tourism. You’ll hear about destination marketing, defining selling points to attract visitors, measuring marketing success, and some government supports for arts and culture organizations. And, again, we’ll talk with people in the real world doing amazing things.

Okay—already in this series we’ve used some language and proposed some ideas that we know arts and culture organizations can be resistant to. It can be difficult for artists and arts organizations to consider the fruit of their passion as products. But bear with us and consider using this vocabulary for your work. Throughout this series’, we’re not suggesting that you only think about your work as a tourist attraction. How you situate and market your organization and your work to your local community can and should be different than to people from outside your region.

What we’re offering in this series is a re-framing of the work you already do. We want to provide you with another language to use and introduce you to a greater pot of resources that exist outside of our sector. I can speak from my personal experience as a former contemporary dancer and choreographer that I would have never spoken about my work as an attraction or a product. Nonetheless, I have some to see that how I valued my work didn’t have to be in contradiction to the ways other people saw it. This is the spirit with which we’re adding tourism into the conversation and the ways that we at Ontario Culture Days understand the potential of our sector.

With pre-pandemic tourism being such a strong engine for economic development, tourism marketing has received a lot of attention in the past few years. But it hasn’t always been positive. Often, people think of tourism marketing as the tools to attract more visitors to a destination, and this is certainly one objective of marking. And attempting to attract ever more people has led to a phenomenon called overtourism, or overcrowding. With it, there are many negative impacts on the wellbeing of communities. Think for example of traffic jams, noise, pollution, or even price inflation. These are very real problems, and as we discussed in the introductory episode, contrary to regenerative tourism. So, we’re going to define destination marketing a bit differently. This will help us to see how marketing tools can actually be used efficiently for the benefit of the community and its residents.

Think back to when we talked about regenerative tourism in Episode 1. Embedded within regenerative tourism are values of reciprocity. So, instead of trying to draw the most people possible, what if we considered aiming for fewer people but who are most likely to really enjoy their experience, possibly stay longer, and leave behind them a positive impact on the community? How can we think about creating and marketing products and activities to the kinds of tourists that will give back?

Identifying the best fit between what the community has to offer (or, to use tourism lingo, the “destination’s attractions”) and the types of tourists the community seeks to attract is one starting place. Finding the right mix of attractions and markets that will ultimately optimize benefits for the destination and its population creates the opportunity for tourists—and tourism—to give back to the community. And as we described in episode one, this giving back starts with discussion and agreement on what is wanted in the community, what is of value to the community, and what the intended value of tourism might be to the community. With this in mind, one of our key marketing activities will be to identify and value the destination assets, and to identify and attract the visitors who are most likely to help the destination enhance the positive benefits of tourism and minimize its negative impacts.

To again refer back to Episode 1, Zita Cobb of Fogo Island offered some great insights into the kinds of questions communities and organizations can ask when thinking about how to engage with tourism: what do we have? What do we know? These questions identify the assets, be they tangible or more ephemeral. But let’s add to that some other questions that allow us to add some valuation into the mix: What do we miss? What do we love? Focusing on the intangible qualities can help potential tourists to differentiate between your offering and another community’s. For example, theatre companies abound in Ontario. But asking what you miss and what you love opens up the potential for narratives to emerge that identify your community or region as unique and differentiate your theatre company from another. From there, we can ask ourselves, what can we do about it?

Essentially, this line of questioning looks at where are we now and where we want to go. Once we have answers to those questions, we can develop marketing strategies to showcase products and services and attract the visitors that will fit the mix.

So—once we collectively agree on what our destination should focus on, and once we know what the assets are that we can use, we can start creating and shaping the products to market. These products—including the intangible elements—are what make us unique. They are the reasons why travellers will take the road towards us and stay with us over another community. They are historical and cultural attractions. They are art galleries that curate local artists and craftspeople and their work. They are event venues that specialize in performing arts and sell local culinary fare. In business, this is called “value proposition.”

Stepping back to see our individual organization’s offerings and experiences as part of a larger intersection of a variety of products—including food, accommodation, shopping, local history, and more—also situates us as organizations within a more knowledgeable and adaptable framework from which to think about the tourist experience. As well, designing such products through collaboration and partnership will give you the opportunity to combine talents and resources. In our conversations with industry folks throughout this series there are ideas and examples of how to get started.

Dreaming up exciting and impactful tourist experiences can be fun and even easy. But, how do you know what a reasonable cost for the tourist is? Pricing is difficult, as it’s not only about covering your costs and generating revenue. What will visitors be willing to pay? What price, even if you’re thinking of creating a free event, would be in line with what other artists, organizations, or destinations sell? Think back to the questions we asked earlier that are aimed at identifying the intangible value that you’re offering. What value do you want the prospective buyer to place on your work? Some obvious considerations are things like the cost of producing the product and the price of comparable products in similar destinations. But there’s also the intrinsic quality and value of your product—the things that make your work, your organization, and your community unique. A good thing about cultural and arts products is that they typically are one of a kind—uniqueness, quality, creativity and local (or authentic) are all great selling points that attract people. In other words, don’t sell yourself short!

Although there will be pricing variations within a destination, consistency and coherence are important. Together, all service providers—from accommodation to food services and attractions—contribute to collectively establish the image and the reputation of the destination, both in terms of quality and in terms of price.

Let’s say that we’ve found the right balance between price and value. How do you communicate to potential visitors what your products are and what your destination has to offer? How do you choose the strategies to sell what you’ve got to them? These are questions whose answers are also best determined by working with the tourism sector as well as other arts and culture organizations. We know that organizations in our sector are often vastly under-resourced, and people wear many, many hats. Combining forces with others helps to share the workload while growing the potential benefit.

In the marketing world, “communication” is often about designing and posting brochures, buying advertising space in a magazine or a website, or buying time on a radio station. You might even advertise or announce your organization or destination on a billboard. Most communication strategies cost money, so budgeting is key. However, there are some communication strategies that only cost time and effort. And while time is money, finding ways to incorporate communication planning and execution into existing staff duties cuts costs. If you’re a not-for-profit organization, perhaps a Board member can help write press-releases to announce events. The media, if interested, will then tell your story to their readers or listeners. To again recall Fogo Island Inn, they have a story to tell. That story is about the demise of the fishing industry, community-centred regenerative tourism, and the leadership of a woman returning to her childhood home in Newfoundland. This mix of despair, purpose, and hope is so compelling that media around the world are echoing it. Most recently, Zita Cobb was the focus of a very popular segment on 60 minutes in the US. So, back to product development: what’s your story and what would compel people to visit you?

After you’ve figured out how you’re going to tell your story, how will you distribute it, or give potential tourists an opportunity to purchase or experience your work? Do you wait for people to come and visit or do you organize tours that are packaged and sold though tour operators and travel agents? If you are an artist, do you wait for customers to come to your gallery or workshop or do you also sell your work online or in a local restaurant or hotel? One thing that the pandemic has taught us is the importance of discoverability in virtual space. But even with in-person events and products, thinking about how you can make it easier for people to find you and to engage with or purchase your work is key to distribution.

Of course, once people find you, they have to get to you! Think, for example, about the agreement that Explorer’s Edge (the Muskoka tourism region) negotiated with Porter Airlines to open a route from Toronto to Muskoka—this partnership gave easier access to the region for visitors coming from Quebec and the United States. This is just one example of how working with your RTO, or Regional Tourism Office, connects you with opportunities to connect with visitors.

Before our last piece of the marketing puzzle, let’s review where we’re at.

Marketing tourism starts with identifying and focusing on the fit between what you’re offering and the kinds of tourists you and your community want to attract. Through this, you can hone in on the values of your community, tease out your unique mix of tangible and intangible qualities—your value proposition—and build your story. The marketing strategies you devise will demonstrate the alignment of your products or services with target markets, pricing, communication, and distribution strategies for everyone involved. And as with any collaboration, common objectives and purposes are key success factors.

How, though, will you know if what you’ve done is successful? This might seem obvious—wouldn’t success be an increased number of visitors and increased revenues? Yes, that’s one metric. But as the arts and culture sectors know very well, success isn’t just about ticket sales or number of people coming through the doors. And as we discussed in the first episode, regenerative tourism is so much more. It prompts the visitor and the destination to think about the impacts of tourism, both positive and negative. It centres relationship-building and community-engagement. And it’s about helping communities and regions to thrive.

So, when thinking about how to measure success, remember that marketing activities are designed to satisfy your patrons. Ultimately, success is measured by satisfied and loyal patrons and customers who will generate positive word of mouth and improve your reputation. However, making a sale or attracting an audience is not enough to generate satisfaction and loyalty. People have to be happy to buy your product or service, experience your work, and engage with your community—and to do it again! Think about the energy and effort that goes into creating your artistic or cultural programming or products. How can you infuse this same drive into connecting with tourists? Providing service and attention to your customers and patrons is also part of marketing! And in the conversations throughout this series with tourism workers in Ontario, we hear that there are resources, people, and organizations that are there to help you.

And as discussed before, success does not necessarily mean more visitors, more sales, or more revenues. Use objectives that are in line with what you, your partners, and your community, want to achieve. Those objectives might be related to employment, quality of life, crowding, or pollution. Tourism is only a tool, among others, to help achieve the goals of your community at large.

What we’re saying is that marketing efforts should not all be geared towards attracting customers. You can also use marketing strategies to “sell” the projects and ideas of your arts and culture organizations to get government funding, sponsorships, and—if you’re a registered charity—even donors. The means are different, of course, but the principles remain the same: you will tell a compelling story to attract attention that allows you to share measurable goals and objectives. This will help funders, sponsors, and donors assess the soundness and rationale for your projects. Here as well, collaboration is important. Choose your partners and share resources and respective strengths.

[SEGUE MUSIC]

In this half of episode three, you’ll hear from some of the cultural tourism professionals we introduced you to in the last episode, and their insights on marketing tourism.

Let’s start with Tova Arbus, the Artistic Producer at Fringe North. Her organization has had an interesting journey, as they have gone through a kind of restart in the last few years. Tova told me about some of the struggles they encountered their first time around as a festival, and marketing was definitely one of them.

[Tova Arbus]

We didn’t really know who we were as an organization or what we were trying to do. The reputation of what a fringe festival is far outpaced where we were at as a festival – and I mean that by reach and engagement, I mean that by our own capacity as a team. We tried to do way too much!

So then when we would reach out to tourism agencies and try to engage and say, “hey, we need you so people will come to our festival,” they weren’t sure what we were doing. That didn’t translate well for them to be able to pay it forward. So, they’re just telling folks, “well, there’s a festival, it’s arts-based and here are the dates.” Beyond that they couldn’t speak to the sell of why folks should plan to be here.

[Shawn]

This is key—Tova’s describing how the lack of a clearly articulated mission or purpose that describes precisely what the product is, prevents any kind of marketing. She’s also planted a seed here that we’ll pick up in the next two episodes on the relationships between our sector and tourism. But for now, hear what Tova and the rest of her team learned about this:

[Tova]

The clearer that a project can be, the clearer that we are as an organization to say, “here’s who we are, here’s exactly what we’re trying to do, and here are the hooks for you, 1 2 3,” the easier it is for those agencies to plan with us.

Tova’s described another really key point, that being succinct in what your product is that you’re offering tourists, or “the hook” as she described it, helps tourism partners effectively market that product.

But as we’re exploring throughout this podcast, there are differences in terminology between the tourism sector and ours. Kate Monk from Explorer’s Edge, RTO 12, gives just one example of how terms that we use don’t necessarily mean the same thing in tourism.

[Kate Monk]

Both tourism and arts and culture use the word experience – we call it Experiential Tourism, they can call it an experiential program, event or performance.

[Shawn]

Experiential tourism generally has a more participatory element to it, whereas when we talk about experiencing arts and culture, we’re generally alluding to a more passive or spectatorship kind of relationship. This points to the importance of making sure that you and your tourism partners have shared definitions and meanings for a variety of terms.

I want to change direction a little bit here and bring in Meredith Armstrong, Director of Economic Development at the City of Sudbury. Meredith spoke to me about the role that arts and culture, and therefore cultural tourism, have to the economic life of a region and the power they have, through tourism, to draw new residents.

[Meredith Armstrong]

I think that people understand now that a strong and vibrant sector of cultural organizations is absolutely a key to economic recovery. We need fun things to do that nurture our souls because they make money and they drive tourism – and tourism needs all the help it can get.

And the workforce – our unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in many, many years. Our job market is tight and we are competing with every other fantastic city for talent. And where are you going to live? You’re going to live somewhere that offers the quality of life you’re looking for.

I see often the tie between tourism and talent attraction. Because a city that is a fun place to visit has the same ingredients as a city that can attract talent to live and become residents there – and culture is smack in the middle of that Venn diagram.

[Shawn]

Here there are direct links back to some of the ideas that we introduced you to in episode one. Regenerative tourism contributes to the vibrancy and livability of the region and helps to attract new residents. So, there clearly is some overlap in the ways that we can market ourselves to tourists and how we market ourselves to people that are already here.

Tim Jennings from the Shaw Festival spoke with me from the perspective of a charitable organization, but regardless of what kind of organization you are, the way he understands how arts and culture contribute to civic life gives us some great examples that can support marketing through a regenerative tourism framework.

[Tim Jennings]

We’re so intrinsic to the life of the community! Again, we’re not a commercial entity – we’re a charity, so it’s our job to put good back into the world. For a lot of last year, in 2020 and then even through 2021, we’ve been aggressively programming in the community and doing other things to try to drive business back.

In 2020, I think we were the only company offering any kind of live performances. We did a whole bunch of outdoor concerts for free, in partnership with FedDev Southern Ontario – the federal development agency – to try to drive economic impact, get people to come and stay over and to do things 50 to 60 people at a time. But to just try to get the stores to have some customers and to keep people afloat, so that they could use the government programs. But they could also get enough income to not lay everybody off and to incentivize the workers to come back and things.

Our thought was how do we help people. All of my wardrobe in 2020 went to work making gowns and masks and gloves for the hospitals and the hospices in the area. We as a charity, we managed to get all of the fabrics donated. So, we were able to then donate all of that on and with the wage subsidies didn’t have to charge the hospitals. It was like a virtuous circle.

There’s this sort of community relationship of how do we help and that is certainly driven people to understand just how intrinsic we are to the Niagara culture, as well as it’s economy – that’s certainly become clear.

[Shawn]

Tim just described the Shaw Festival as “intrinsic to the life of the community.” How might you describe your organization through this kind of framing? How can you articulate what your organization does as contributing to the regeneration of your region? How, even if you’re not a charity, can you demonstrate the ways that your attraction “puts good back into the world,” as Tim said?

The piece here about contributing to community is a way to position arts and culture to tourists that also invites them to feel part of the community themselves. And this overlap is helping to, in some way, redefine who a tourist is. Think back to our last episode where we defined this and listen to how Tova from Fringe North described a new trajectory that her organization is taking.

[Tova]

We often look outside and you say, “oh, tourism! The only folks who are going to come and check out these tourist hubs – guided tours, fishing tours, fly and things, who are going to stay at hotels, who are going to do stuff – they’re only people from away.” But what I’ve noticed within my own kind of group of contacts is that folks are looking to stay at home. We’ve done it in my family, where we’re going half an hour outside the city and staying in a cabin there and “playing tourist” in our own backyard.

And it’s been really exciting to discover the things that we would always miss, because we’d say we’re going on a trip and it meant that we were going to Sudbury or farther east down to Southern Ontario or up the North Shore, like north up Lake Superior. But there was all this really great stuff in our backyard that was geared for tourism, that we were missing as locals.

And I’m really hoping to find a way to balance both of those things and how we promote the festival and look to engage folks. Not only welcoming folks from other places to come and spend time here and discover what Sioux St. Marie has to offer, but also to look at folks who are already here and invite them into the experience of seeing their city through a completely different lens.

For me that lens is tourism, if you will: seeing it through a different kind of arts and culture experience than that they would normally choose.

[Shawn]

Whether you’re an individual artist operating your own business, or part of an organization that offers programming or other experiences and attractions, being able to market to tourists means recognizing that we’re already part of the tourism sector. It also means understanding what it is that tourists want, or the demand, and how they plan their trip. The pandemic has influenced changes in behaviour and planning, and Tova described this to me in very clear terms.

[Tova]

People are even more particular about how they go places and when. We can’t rely on just “let’s do something! Okay, let’s take a trip!” anymore, because that intentionality has crept into all aspects of our lives. We are going to have to get more intentional on our side about what we’re offering and why folks will engage. Whether it’s safe – can they feel good about coming here? Is this the right way to spend maybe their only vacation in the summer?

[Shawn]

Intention. This loops back to what Tova was saying earlier on being clear about what your product is and how that is necessary to drive marketing.

A few minutes ago, Kate talked about sustaining marketing through the pandemic even when nothing was happening. She also mentioned to me a common misstep that arts and culture organizations often make during tough times.

[Kate]

From my own background in the arts, in troubled times the first thing to go is the marketer. A lot of smaller entities – which we have in rural destinations, you have a lot of underfunded organizations – you don’t have access to capital that a business would. And you rely on grants and this type of thing. It’s a constant seeking of the grants, as we all know.

It often means that a not-for-profit board that is interested in the expression, rather than the commerce, will not see the benefit of keeping on a marketer or hiring someone who’s got a great deal of skill and investing in that.

I think it would be better if they held that position there and switched on a little bit of the commerce-thinking, instead of just the sort of survival-thinking, because that will lead to more revenue.

[Shawn]

But what happens if your organization has let your marketing person go, or you don’t have one to begin with? Meredith from the City of Sudbury talks about training resources that are available in many regions of the province.

[Meredith]

We have a Regional Business Centre, which is a small business enterprise centre in Sudbury. These are found in lots of municipalities. And we have a fantastic team available to talk about business planning. We offer some seminars like marketing on a shoestring, how to use social media, or how to develop a business plan, a business model canvas for instance. That is a free resource and it’s available to entrepreneurs.

But there’s nothing stopping a sharp organization or an artisan or a cultural enterprise from stepping forward and making use of that. What happens is not only does that organization go away with stronger business planning skills, but our staff are always talking about interesting and unique things that they’ve heard about. You never know where that conversation can take you, in terms of partnerships in the future.

[Shawn]

We know, however, that there are many individual artists and small organizations that just can’t take the time to train in marketing, let alone develop and carry out marketing plans. And that’s where RTOs can step in. As Kate says, part of their purpose is:

[Kate]

To offer our services and say, “okay, we’ll do it because it’s too much for you.” We do the same thing for a B&B, because a B&B owner has a lot going on: they have to do the check-in and they got to go clean the room, and then they got to get the breakfast ready.

[Shawn]

So, there are supports out there. People like Meredith and Kate, and the organizations they work at, want us to know that they have our backs.

[Meredith]

Things are tough, but you’re not alone. There are folks who you might not have thought of who would be interested in talking and supporting. I do think that there are lots of great staff at the municipal government level who want to talk to these groups and provide some feedback and some resources.

I also think that we need to continue hammering that message home, that recovery depends on cultural experiences and the wellbeing of our cultural sector. I think all of us together continue to hammer that message home.

That resonates with people as they realize that this is the stuff they want to do when they can get out and about again. This is where the pent-up demand is for people who create. I send my love and support to the cultural organizations out there because it hasn’t been easy, and we want to do all we can to keep things strong.

[Shawn]

This last point is a great way to wrap up the episode. The demand is there. How can you position your work in ways that meet that demand?

In the next episode, we’ll explore ways to manage the relationship between arts, culture, and tourism. You’ll hear about managing the relationship between arts, culture, and tourism and some current trends and opportunities. And, again, we’ll talk with people in the real world doing amazing things.

I’m Shawn Newman, host of the Ontario Culture Days’ Departure Lounge. This podcast was made possible thanks to support from the Province of Ontario and the Canada Council for the Arts. Thank you, also, to our experts featured in part two, and thanks to you for listening.

We’d love to hear about anything that you and your organization are building, especially when it comes to working with the tourism sector. To tell us about your work, or to hear more about ours, visit our website at oncd.backup.sandboxsoftware.ca or email us at info@onculturedays.ca.