As I was sitting in a hotel in Portland, Oregon (America's most boring city) watching the NBC Olympic broadcast, I found myself thinking that we truly are fortunate to live where we do. Not only is Vancouver much more interesting than (yawn) Portland, B.C. is also embarrassingly beautiful.
Apparently, I wasn't the only one thinking this way.
A recent article in the Vancouver Sun reported what might seem obvious: tourism interest in BC showed significant interest during and just following the Olympics. How could it not with hours of coverage showing the stunning views of Vancouver harbour and the North Shore mountains.
The challenge for tourism operators is to try to capture that interest. Both Tourism Vancouver and Tourism Whistler are planning on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to market the city and try to parlay the positive Olympic publicity into something tangible.
Squamish also needs a plan to market itself. Although there's no way the town can afford to compete with Whistler and Vancouver, there has to be a significant investment if the town hopes to see more than just accidental spin-off.
There's been a positive start with the Spirit of Squamish videos produced for Tourism Squamish and posted on YouTube.
The package of 11 videos is slick and absolutely stunning. Focussing on different aspects of life in Squamish from families to kiteboarding to weekend getaways, each short video offers a snapshot of some aspect of life in Squamish.
For locals, it's a good reminder of how fortunate we are to live where we do. For visitors, the videos show Squamish in the best possible light. If watching one of these vignettes is your first exposure to Squamish, then you'd be booking a flight and a room the next day.
The community looks that good.
What's a little disappointing, though, is how few views the videos have had. Most have been viewed about 1,000 times in the month or so since they've been posted.
Thirty views a day isn't really "going viral" in Internet terms. And since many of those views are simply from curious locals like me, it's probably not enough to justify the cost of production.
Although I'm certain too that YouTube isn't the only distribution method for these videos, with the Olympics and enormous media attention focussed on the region, I'm sure Tourism Squamish had bigger hopes for the launch of their videos.
But the videos exist and there's still lots of value in them, but they need to be used as part of a significant marketing strategy if they are really going to work.
The marketing has to be pretty aggressive and pretty quick if Squamish hopes to have any lasting tourism benefit from the Olympics. Tourism Vancouver president Rick Antonson is quoted in the Vancouver Sun article saying that without follow up, the positive feelings that people have about Canada will be gone in six months.
It may be that council has to dig a little deeper into its budget to ensure that Tourism Squamish has enough money to promote the community the way it deserves to be.
