Britain's Prince Harry (R) walks with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as they view areas of the boardwalk that have been repaired in Seaside Heights, a beach town hit by Hurricane Sandy last year, in New Jersey, May 14, 2013. Lucas Jackson / Reuters

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and his family are starring in television commercials that are part of a publicly funded $25 million tourism campaign to encourage people to visit the Jersey Shore after Superstorm Sandy, but Democrats say they are simply taxpayer-funded campaign ads.

The ad campaign called “Stronger Than The Storm” launched last week with its first ad, but five more begin today. Supporters of Christie note the ads are not just running in New Jersey, but out of state as well.

In the first ad, Christie and his family are visible at the end of the 30 second commercial.

“The governor’s voice came through loud and clear,” Eis said, noting they were fighting a “massive consumer perception” that the beach is still closed due to the storm.

The post New Jersey Governor criticized for turning tourism ads into campaign asset appeared first on Skift.

Read the Complete Story...

Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions calls its small shops the "original boutiques" in its new ad. Screenshot / YouTube

Trave ads seek to inspire and excite viewers into booking a trip. The methods used to elicit such sentiments include fast-paced music, flashy images, and emotional voiceovers; and ultimately they aim to convince viewers that a better time is just a plane ride away.

This week Holland defends its traditional way of life as the ‘original cool,’ while Thomson revamps its brand with a free running routine. Portland takes its time to convince viewers that it never settles for boring and an Italian tour company pushes food and wine instead of its services.

FOR ALL OF OUR SKIFTADS OF THE WEEK COLLECTION, CHECK OUT OUR ARCHIVES HERE.

Holland appeals to Americans’ inner hipster with a new multi-year campaign. The ad scoffs at Brooklyn, stating that it doesn’t consider its meals as artisanal or its small shops as boutiques because that’s the way they’ve always been in Amsterdam.  The ad quickly became one of the most watched videos on YouTube this week and one of the top videos on Reddit video after its debut on Tuesday.

Holland, The Original Cool was created by New York-based Mustache with sponsorship from the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions, Amsterdam Schipol Airport, KLM, and Amsterdam Marketing.

Thomson Holidays uses the freerunning trend to take viewers through one of its cruise ships at high speed. Freerunning team 3RUN stars in the campaign that’s meant to rebrand Thomson Cruises with a more contemporary, youthful image. The ship shown is the Thomson Dream, which just went underwent a multi-million pound makeover.

Travel Portland‘s new tourism campaign is too heavy on the text and too light on images that show what truly makes Portland unique. Images of Portland’s serene shoreline, biggest brands including Colombia and Nike, and famous Voodoo Doughnut shop are mixed in with generic shots of wine glasses and restaurants. At two minutes long, the video could afford to cut some length for a more direct and powerful campaign.

This new ad for Roman tour company Carrani does as much to draw tourists to Italy as it does to convince them to choose the established brand’s services. The video seamlessly connects the brand with the city’s finest food, people, and architecture. Italian videographer Gabriele Rivoli created the video.

The post Best travel ads this week: Holland argues it’s cooler than Brooklyn appeared first on Skift.

The mobile visitor centers are used both to inform visitors already in a location, like Arlington Convention and Visitors Service‘s truck that travels between the nearby neighborhoods, and draw tourists to a new city, like Visit Eau Claire‘s Fun Patrol that attends music fairs across the state.

The most recent mobile launch is from Visit Saint Paul, which unveiled its mobile visitor center Paul just last week.  Similarly, Missouri National Recreational River rolled out a  mobile ranger station last month to attract visitors in other parts of the state to the actual river.

All tourism organizations emphasize the importance of taking their message “to the people” when announcing the new initiative.

Troy Thompson, founder of the Travel 2.0 Consulting Group, spoke in favor of closing traditional visitor centers at the Missouri Association of Convention & Visitor Bureaus Annual Conference in 2012.

His advice for destination marketing organizations was as follows:

Take your message to the people!

Conventions, sporting events, holiday weekends at the airport, marketing invasions of the next town and why not a road trip to Vegas?

Sure, keep some brochures in the thing. Line the outside with flip-up panels and iPads. Customize the interior with 4 or 5 information stations. Any why wouldn’t you pimp that thing out with a great paint job, including a huge map of the local area.

Tweet the location. Build a following. Show up spontaneously and give out great prizes. Become a visible part of the community.

This is not a campaign.

This is a long-term solution.

A permanent shift to reflect the changing consumer.

Sait Paul tourism officials speak on the importance of tourism and the expected impact of their new mobile visitor center in the video below:

Click through the slideshow above to see the mobile visitor centers of ten U.S. cities.

The post Tourist visitor centers go mobile to meet travelers where they’re at appeared first on Skift.

People get soaked on the Whirlpool Jet Boat tour ride and it travels through the Niagara River Gorge on the Niagara River. NiagaraFallsUSA1 / Flickr

Tourism promotion efforts in Niagara Falls and the surrounding region will soon be getting a boost from the federal government.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand announced Monday during a press conference in Youngstown a decision by the federally funded, non-profit group, Brand USA, to include the Greater Niagara Region in its future efforts to attract international travelers.

Gillibrand said Brand USA will promote the Greater Niagara Region as an international travel destination, featuring the Falls region as a “Trip Idea” on the New York state page of its Discover America website.

Brand USA was created in 2009 to lead a promotional campaign aimed at drawing more international travelers to destinations in America. Gillibrand said the addition of the Greater Niagara Region will put the Falls, Buffalo and other local points of interest at the forefront of that effort.

“The Greater Niagara Region is a do-not-miss for international travelers coming to the U.S.,” Gillibrand said. “This new attention by Brand USA will only enhance the work we’ve done as a community to make Niagara an international travel destination. Niagara County is a family friendly destination with iconic natural and cultural landmarks that people of all ages can enjoy. An increase in international visitors to Niagara would increase our export growth, facilitating job creation in the region.”

In April, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote to officials at Brand USA, pointing out to them that key Western New York destinations, including Niagara Falls itself, were left off of the group’s federally funded promotional materials. On Monday, Schumer applauded Brand USA’s decision to include the Falls and other “Western New York gems” on its Discover America New York state page.

“Today’s news means that the Niagara region should expect boatloads of extra visitors at this natural wonder, and premier Western New York tourist destinations will also receive increased attention and visitors,” Schumer said.

According to Gillibrand’s office, the Niagara Region ranks in the top 20 destinations for overseas travelers, making tourism and the service-export industry a prime economic engine in the area. Last year, her office said visitors spent roughly $491 million on travel expenses in Niagara County.

Mayor Paul Dyster called the added promotional support from Brand USA “good news” for the city and surrounding area.

“We do some of this already but we have a very limited budget,” he said. “This puts us on the A-list to be promoted.”

John Percy, president and CEO of the county’s lead tourism agency, the Niagara Tourism & Convention Corp., said Brand USA highlighting the assets of the area will strengthen the local tourism industry, making it more of an economic driver for the region.

“This initiative will increase our visibility in front of a global audience and attract additional visitors, and therefore more overnight guests and business for our area stakeholders,” Percy said.

(c)2013 the Niagara Gazette (Niagara Falls, N.Y.). Distributed by MCT Information Services.

The post Niagara Falls celebrates inclusion in Brand USA’s global marketing campaign appeared first on Skift.

These days, the quirky and cute works, especially if you can make it into a video, upload to YouTube and get it to go viral. That’s what Newfoundland & Labrador tourism, already slightly off-kilter when it comes to its tourism ads, is going for with a new hit: goat on a horse.

And that’s what the ad is, a baby goat on a horse, caught inadvertently on camera in 2011 while filming another tourism commercial, which makes for a cute moment in a picturesque remote location. It didn’t think much of it, but when NewFoundland’s social media team saw goats trending online, they decided to release the ad now.

Newfoundland tourism is savvy enough to milk this moment for all its worth, tying it with its half-an-hour-behind-U.S.-and-Canada-eastern-time-means-slowing-down “Find Yourself” theme it has been working with since 2007.

At the very edge of the continent, half an hour off kilter with the rest of the world, there’s a tendency towards the unexpected.
While filming a commercial for Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism, the crew spotted these two unlikely friends near Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve on the southwestern part of the Avalon Peninsula. Which begs the question, what else would you expect in a place with its very own time zone?

Not this would would have any effect on Newfoundland’s tourism numbers, but any exposure is good exposure in destination marketing, right? Almost, but not as cute as the VisitScotland’s Shetland-ponies-in-cardigans ad campaign.

The post Goat on a horse promotes tourism for Newfoundland. Literally. appeared first on Skift.

Priceline CEO Jeff Boyd's mug, on stage at PhocusWright 2011 conference. PhoCusWright / Flickr.com

With Priceline’s acquisition of Kayak expected to close May 21, Priceline will have a new weapon in its arsenal, but CEO Jeffery Boyd vowed today that Priceline won’t do anything to bias Kayak’s search results.

Appearing on CNBC today, Boyd said that Priceline won’t do anything to upset the level playing field that exists among Kayak’s advertisers.

Boyd said Priceline will take no actions to “compromise the integrity of a great marketplace.”

That may come as good news to Kayak’s advertisers as Priceline, and subsidiaries Booking.com, rentalcars.com and Agoda, already accounted for 10% of Kayak’s revenue in 2012, second only to Expedia Inc.’s 26% contribution to Kayak’s total revenue.

You can expect that mix to change, however, as Priceline and Expedia jockey over their new travel metasearch holdings in Kayak and Germany’s Trivago, respectively.

Now that TripAdvisor has launched hotel metasearch, the maneuverings among major players will be fascinating to watch.

In other matters, Boyd provided further detail on Booking.com’s U.S. offline advertising campaign, which he characterized as an “experiment.”

Asked why Booking.com would make that investment in the U.S., rather than in an emerging market, Boyd said other OTAs already have a voice in offline advertising in the U.S., and it was important to ensure that Booking.com also has a voice, too, so it doesn’t lose customers.

Boyd added that the U.S. is a large market, that Booking.com can reach a lot of people in the U.S., and because it is relatively new to the U.S., Booking.com has plenty of room to grow.

And, Booking.com is indeed likely to grow in the U.S., as a complement to Priceline.com.

The post Priceline CEO: We won’t bias Kayak search results appeared first on Skift.

Expedia Australia's Wes Anderson-inspired campaign. / Expedia.com.au

This week Lufthansa pokes fun at Germans, Expedia takes viewers around the world with a Wes Anderson-inspired tour, a Baltic cruise company tugs heartstrings, and two more videos provide a bit of Friday escapism.

FOR ALL OF OUR SKIFTADS OF THE WEEK COLLECTION, CHECK OUT OUR ARCHIVES HERE.

Germany’s national carrier Lufthansa pokes fun at the country’s national character with its new “These Germans” spot. A disdainful French businessman goes from hotel to business class while pointing out everything the Germans do right along the way — always so precise, punctual, and perfectly organized, of course. “This constant perfectionism?” he asks at the end, “fantastique.”

Expedia Australia‘s newest brand campaign borrows mightily from the work of filmmaker Wes Anderson to take viewers along one boy’s quirky journey around the world. The campaign and its slogan, “Out there, starts here,” will show up on TV, digital, and physical platforms.

This is one of those ads that prompts viewers to make bets on which product could possibly be promoted at the end. In this case, the answer is the Tallink Silja Cruise Line that sails around the Baltic Sea. Although the ultimate message of the campaign is understandable, the minute-long feature of a father-daughter dance is not.

Rather than show travelers all the reasons that they should take a beach trip, kitesurfing tour operator Sueno Surf, show them what they’d be missing. The ad surely resonates with viewers that deal with cold weather, but doesn’t do enough to show them how or why Sueno Surf will take them somewhere warmer.

Discover America just added this three-year old video, produced by NYC & Company, to its YouTube account. The video describes the city as “the capital of everything” and “five cities in one,” but somehow it manages to make New York seem downright boring.

This shootout to NYC’s five boroughs came long before the recent launch of NYC & Company’s Neighborhood X Neighborhood initiative, which encourages visitors to explore all of the city’s neighborhoods.

The post Best travel ads this week: German perfectionism to quirky explorations appeared first on Skift.

Minato Mirai 21, often shortened to Minato Mirai or MM, is a large urban development, and the central business district of Yokohama, Japan. / Yokohama Convention and Visitors' Bureau

Yokohama Convention & Visitors Bureau recently announced the new branding of Yokohama as Japan’s premier international convention city.

“Japan’s First Port of Call” was designated as the selling message for Yokohama. The idea behind it comes from the City’s history, when 154 years ago, Yokohama was the first port that opened up to the world, after 200 years of seclusion in Japan’s history.

Kana Nomoto from YCVB explains: “From being the first Japanese port to open up, to hosting first-time-in-Asia congresses, and the first in innovation and research and development, our open, “can-do” approach has made this city Japan’s first port of call. And, for any international meeting organiser who wants to bring their event to Yokohama, the YCVB is, of course, their first port of call as we are a full service bureau.”

The post Yokohama brands itself as “Japan’s First Port of Call” to get events business appeared first on Skift.

Read the Complete Story...

Canada’s national tourism marketing firm doesn’t want to compete for U.S. tourists any more.

In 2012, the Canadian Tourism Commission stopped all media relations, public relations, and social media work in the U.S. after finding little return on the money they laid for expensive marketing campaigns. American visitors spent an average of $518 per trip in Canada last year, the lowest amount spent by an international visitor group.

The exit was part of a strategic shift at the organization aimed at getting the greatest bang for their buck, so to speak. The 2012 annual report from the Canadian Tourism Commission, “Delivering Value for Canada’s Tourism Businesses Through Innovation and Efficiency,” succinctly explains the organization’s decision as follows:

Given our strategy to invest where the Canada brand can lead, to ensure the highest possible return, we determined that our limited resources prevented us from having
an adequately strong impact in the US Leisure market. Furthermore, redirecting those dollars to focus on higher yielding international markets could generate measurable gains. Overall, this shift enabled us to demonstrate our leadership position with a solid and unified Canada brand in markets of highest return.

The CTC is now directing those dollars on higher yielding markets including Australia, France, Germany and the UK; four countries that account for almost 60 percent of overseas tourism revenue.

The CTC remains active in the U.S. market by promoting meetings and convention travel to Canada and hosting its annual Canada Media Marketplace event. Booked business events from all markets brought an estimated $44 million into the Canadian economy in 2012.

Outward focused

CTC gives the responsibility of encouraging its citizens to explore other parts of the country to provincial and territorial partners. It views domestic tourism, which only generates an estimated $256 per person per trip, as a limited space to focus for growth given the finite number of potential tourists.

Our strategy, therefore, focuses on revenue. Generating revenue from the international traveller helps alleviate the long-term reliance on the domestic market for tourism growth.

The basis of CTC argument is the they want to “deliver returns on the taxpayer dollars invested in [the] organization” by assessing the effectiveness of campaigns and attributing their work into tangible economic impacts.

CTC estimates that its campaigns are directly responsible for bringing in $687 million to Canada. The annual report highlights that this is ”new money being injected into the Canadian economy, not domestic spending.”

The 2012 per trip expenditure and arrivals of the Canada’s ten largest overseas markets plus the U.S. and Canada are shown below:

The 2012 annual report from the Canadian Tourism Commission, Delivering Value for Canada’s Tourism Businesses Through Innovation and Efficiency, is below:

The post Why Canada doesn’t waste its time or money on marketing in the U.S. appeared first on Skift.

That’s what the people at Kayak, who so feared the impact of Google Flight Search, must be saying as they watch events unfold at TripAdvisor, which likely is a much larger threat to Kayak’s business.

Consider that there is a lot more money in hotel metasearch (TripAdvisor) than flights (Google Flight Search), and Google Hotel Finder has yet to create a ripple.

Now TripAdvisor, which began rolling out hotel metasearch on mobile, tablets and desktops late last year, announced yesterday during its first-quarter earnings call that half of its branded sites around the world now feature hotel metasearch, and that it will be in place on 100% of its sites, with 200 million monthly unique visitors, by June.

The U.S. site isn’t fully rolled out yet, but TripAdvisor sites in the UK, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland and Singapore already have the full treatment.

Once hotel metasearch, which brings TripAdvisor higher CPC rates and conversions than non-transactional traffic, is fully in place, TripAdvisor plans to launch its first global, offline advertising campaign, starting in the U.S. this summer.

Given TripAdvisor’s power and skills, the Kayak folks are definitely watching what TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer yesterday referred to as TripAdvisor’s “big bet.”

“So I’m certainly counting on the fact over the long term, and this is our big bet that we totally believe in, that by delivering this better experience, by delivering the notion that not only can you pick the perfect hotel for you because of all this incredibly rich content, we’ve scoured the Internet, found you the best price as well. And there is in a lot of parts of the world — in many parts of the world a meaningful price discrepancy that we’re now helping users sort through and save them money on the trip.

“So you combine both of those. We get our message out. And yes, there’ll be some short-term revenue pain that kind of we consciously decided we’re willing to take right now because that user experiences is that much better, and we expect to get it back in spades in outgoing years, not part of the revenue-neutral equation.”

Kayak, which likely will officially be in the Priceline fold within a few weeks, barring a regulatory setback, is not about to roll over and play dead, but between TripAdvisor’s entry into hotel metasearch, and Expedia’s controlling stake in Germany hotel-metasearch site Trivago, the competitive set for Kayak is now much more formidable.

Julie Bradley, TripAdvisor’s CFO, noted that the rollout of hotel metasearch, the first-quarter acquisitions of Tiny Post, Jetsetter, CruiseWise, and Niumba, and the offline advertising campaign, may turn TripAdvisor’s EBITDA negative in the third and fourth quarters of 2013.

For people wondering about TripAdvisor’s acquisition blitz and how the company views it, below you’ll find Kaufer’s lengthy answer to a question on the strategy.

It is interesting to note in his answer that Jetsetter won’t be calling the shots during its life under TripAdvisor, with the inference being that TripAdvisor’s SniqueAway business will be taking the lead.

In addition, TripAdvisor, which has acquired “15 to 20″ companies, according to Kaufer, isn’t done buying yet, and adding talent and technology to its Business Listings subscription business is one area that could be ripe for another big buy. Kaufer said:

“TinyPost, we look at and say, “Fun product,” “Already built,” “Mobile and social combined,” and “How cool it is to send a postcard when you’re on the road,” “What a great way to share the TripAdvisor brand with all of your friends in a fun way.” And we have a lot of travelers in market, so could be kind of really nice brand extension, not looking at it from a “I’m going to charge you $1 a postcard.” That’s just not on the table right now.

“Niumba vacation rentals, clearly we’re growing in Vacation Rentals. We’ve done 2 acquisitions. This is the third. And it expands our inventory footprint. Go back to the user perspective. And if you want to rent a place in Spain, we’ve just added a ton of great inventory to help you find the right place. We already have the infrastructure to — we already have the traffic, we already have the infrastructure. So it just kind of fits in with where we’re going.

“CruiseWise and Jetsetter, two acquisitions kind of led by other TripAdvisor Media Group businesses. And so, as running the whole media group, whenever any one of our businesses identifies a company out there that can make their core value proposition bigger, better, scalable or can extend them into a new market that’s particularly interesting, these two aren’t examples of that, but I would generally look favorably upon it because I like to let the — most of the businesses run on their own. So that kind of explains the CruiseWise and the Jetsetter.

“The other way I — the other lens through which I look at acquisitions is really furthering the core TripAdvisor offering globally. So we’d look at either something that adds lots of traffic in a market where we’re not strong in, or something that adds technology or features to something that, in fact, we can roll out globally because, again, we’re trying to leverage our traffic base, our content base, our reach, our membership, and those are pretty powerful assets that, if we brought a technology or a team, we can often make some nice hay with that.

“And then just sort of TripAdvisor for Business as a separate group serving up subscriptions to hoteliers and other folks interested in the — other businesses interested in reaching the eyeballs of travelers, that’s kind of another leg of the company that could be up for acquisitions in the future simply because we have the sales force, we have the traffic and we have the travelers. So maybe, there are some additional products that would fit there.

“In almost all of the acquisitions that we do, talent plays a key role. So it’s not that — obviously, we innovate and we build a lot of stuff ourselves, but we’re certainly not a company known for a “not minted here” situation as I think these folks would make it up to 15 or 20 acquisitions that we’ve done, something like that.”

The post The biggest battle coming in online travel: Tripadvisor Vs. Kayak appeared first on Skift.