Thursday, December 19, 2019
As 2019 draws to a close, we’re looking back on some of our top stories of the year. And what an
fantastic year this has been! Here are some of our highlights from 2019:
1) Direct Charter Flights from China
Adding air connections between Nova Scotia and international destinations is crucial to grow tourism. In November, the province announced China Southern Airlines will fly two direct charter flights from the city of Guangzhou to Halifax, bringing hundreds of visitors from China next fall. Tourism Nova Scotia (TNS) hosted GZL Travel Inc., the tour company who will be selling travel packages for the charter flights in September so they could experience Nova Scotia for themselves. We’re excited to work with GZL to promote Nova Scotia vacation packages to travellers in China!
2) Award-winning Destination
This year, Travel Lemming's panel of influential travel bloggers named Nova Scotia as one of the Top 30 Emerging Destinations globally for 2020 and the number one overall destination in the US and Canada. Then thousands of Travel Lemming’s readers weighed in and named Nova Scotia one of the top five emerging destinations in the world. Two leading travel magazines, Conde Nast Traveller and Travel + Leisure also named Cape Breton Island one of the top island destinations in the world.
3) Award-winning Media Campaign
TNS received the 2019 Explore Canada Industry Award of Excellence for its media campaign in partnership with the Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl. Our travel media specialist, Pam Wamback, was also nominated by travel writers for an individual Explore Canada Award.
4) Tourism Nova Scotia Wins Innovation Award
Tourism Nova Scotia’s World-class Experience EXCELLerator Program received the Tourism Innovation Award at this year’s Canadian Tourism Awards, presented by the Tourism Industry Association of Canada. The Canadian Tourism Awards are widely considered the standard of excellence for businesses and organizations in the travel industry, showcasing the nation's best tourism products, services and experiences.
5) Tourism Infrastructure Investments
The province is investing $6 million in tourism infrastructure to enhance the visitor experience at five of Nova Scotia’s most iconic attractions through the Tourism Revitalization of Icons Program. In 2019, investments were announced for the Halifax Harbour Islands, Annapolis Royal Farmers Market, Cape Split, Burntcoat Head Park, Cape d’Or, the Cabot Trail and the Lunenburg waterfront.
6) Nova Scotia Unlisted Contest
TNS received more than 4,600 submissions to the Nova Scotia Unlisted Instagram contest, which asked Nova Scotians to share photos of their favorite activities and places to help inspire more people to visit. Two photos were selected for the covers of the 2020 Nova Scotia travel guides.
7) Marketing Co-investments
TNS co-invested more than $518,000 through the 2019 Digital Content Marketing Program, which was matched by tourism businesses and organizations to create compelling photos and video and customized digital marketing campaigns to help attract visitors from key national and international markets. We worked with 15 partners to capture photos and videos, and 17 partners on digital advertising, creating 107 photos and 55 videos and generating 3.6 million completed video views and 392,000 website impressions for our partners.
8) New World-class Experiences
Through the World-class Experience EXCELLerator Program, TNS worked with tourism businesses to bring six new experiences to market in 2019. This year, we’ve partnered with nine tourism businesses to create experiences that will be available for visitors to purchase in 2020.
9) Earned Media Circulation Reaches 314 million
Tourism Nova Scotia’s travel media program helps raise awareness of the province by influencing positive media coverage about Nova Scotia. In 2019, our team attended seven international media marketplaces and hosted 71 media influencers and four film crews from our key markets with a combined circulation of 314 million. Among the many awesome journalists and influencers we hosted were Boboandchichi.com, Jaqueline Poirier- The Crazy Plate Lady, and Jeanne Ferron from France. Additionally, as part of our marketing campaign we hosted the Big Food Bucket List, Colin and Justin, and Bon Appetite.
10) London Taxi Partnership
TNS teamed up with WestJet on a London taxi marketing campaign to showcase Nova Scotia’s world-class visitor experiences on the streets of London. The campaign included 14 co-branded taxis on the road for six months, as well as branded seats, receipts, and videos on the in-cab entertainment system.
11) Do More in Nova Scotia Campaign
We launched a new marketing campaign aimed at attracting first-time visitors from key markets in North America in 2019. The “Do More in Nova Scotia” campaign is an evolution of the very successful “If You Only Knew” campaign which ran from 2016 to 2018. The focus is helping travellers visualize the incredible things they can do on a Nova Scotia vacation.
In 2018, Tourism Nova Scotia commissioned an independent analysis of our marketing campaigns, which estimated that for every $1 invested in the media buy in our target markets of Quebec, Ontario, Northeastern United States, and UK, visitation influenced by the campaign generated $26 in tourism spending. Research shows our marketing campaigns are effective at increasing awareness of Nova Scotia and influencing tourism spending.
12) Germany Sales Mission
Tourism Nova Scotia led a sales mission in Germany, along with Destination Cape Breton Association and Parks Canada to raise awareness of Nova Scotia’s amazing vacation opportunities among some of the country’s top travel agents and tour companies.
We look forward to continuing to work with all of our industry partners to further drive tourism growth in 2020!
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