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Home My WebLink About2022-03-15CLARINGTON TOURISM ADVISORY COMMITTEE Meeting Minutes March 15, 2022 1 PM Teleconference Members Present: Fred Archibald, Chair Petra Schwirtz Laura Holmes Bonnie Wrightman, CBOT Councillor Ron Hooper Marsha Carbon Rita Smith Brandon Pickard Regrets: Amy Verwey Christine McSorley Evan King Staff: Ashlee Kielbiski, Temporary Tourism Coordinator and Staff Liaison Jessica Ward, Temporary Tourism Programmer 1. Call to Order o Meeting was called to order 1:02 PM 2. Adoption of Agenda Moved by, Councillor Ron Hooper, seconded by, Petra Schwirtz That the agenda for March 15, 2022 be adopted. Carried 3. Approval of October 21, 2021, Meeting Minutes Moved by, Petra Schwirtz, seconded by, Marsha Carbon: That the meeting minutes of October 21, 2021 be approved. Carried 4. Pecuniary Interest/Conflict of Interest o N/A 5. Staff Presentation of 2021 Campaign Highlights Staff shared with TAC members the highlights and data from the summer, fall, and holiday campaigns. This data included surveys, social media statistics, advertising and key takeaways. Summer Campaign: o When the lockdowns lifted in spring, our goal was to get out in the community, reconnect with residents and visitors, and continue to promote COVID-friendly activities and attractions. o Four pop up events were planned throughout Clarington: o East Beach Park, Bowmanville o Tooley's Mill Park, Courtice o Clarington Farmers' Market, Newcastle o Orono Park, Orono. o Residents were encouraged to come out and receive a free `Clarington is Home' T-shirt and free pancake breakfast kits that were re -purposed from the canceled Canada Day activities. 0 241 surveys were completed at the pop-up locations with QR codes and paper copies available. Examples of questions and responses were as follows: o Question: How do you prefer to receive your tourism information. Top answers: Facebook, Email, Instagram o Question: What are your favourite tourism activities. Top answers: waterfront, farmer's markets, beaches, trails, patios, farms o Question: Where are you from. Answers: Bowmanville, Newcastle, Courtice, Orono, Oshawa, Toronto o Influencer partnership with @to_finest reached 150,000 accounts and 500,000 impressions. A Reel was created and reached 72,142 people. o Digital advertising had an economic impact of $239,382 based on $78/individual/day. Conversion rates are supplied by the RTO, Central Counties Tourism Fall: This season we tried a few new marketing channels including Horizon and Adamo Magazine, which included ads in both magazines, digital ads on the Gardiner Expressway, video ad in Yonge-Dundas Square and elevator advertising. We also created a featured route with The Weekend Route called Apples, Corn Mazes and Sweet Treats. With the assistance of the Tourism Advisory Committee (TAC), we visited four locations on weekends during the fall. Residents were encouraged to come out to various Clarington tourist destinations to receive a free `Clarington is Home' tote bag. At each location we completed surveys to gain insight into visitors intentions and motivations. We were able to create a digital survey using a QR code that visitors could easily complete using their own phone or device. This was extremely effective and important during COVID-19 precautions. o Pop up locations included Bowmanville Fish Ladder, Pingle's Farm Market, Archibald's Orchard and the Clarington Farmer's Market o Pop up survey results included: ■ most people attending these locations heard about them from friends, followed by Instagram. ■ 45% of surveyed respondents fall between the ages of 25-40 ■ 40% of surveyed respondents planned on spending $25-$50 and 25% planned on spending between $50-$100 ■ Most people were visiting from Toronto, Oshawa and Ajax • We partnered with TO's Finest to create an Instagram giveaway, reel and engaging content featuring a Clarington Summer Road Trip. The TO's Finest audience consists of mainly women between the ages of 25-45 living in Toronto with over 167,000 followers. o Video created saw over 54,000 views • Horizonon Travel and Lifestyle Magazine had 100,000 copies distributed and included 168 x 5-second video digital advertising spots in Yonge and Dundas Square and 330 x 10-second video spots on the Gardiner Expressway at Exhibition. • Adamo Nest Magazine and elevator screen ads. Over 100,000 magazines were distributed and digital ads on over 700 elevator screens. • We created a featured route, Apples, Corn Mazes, and Sweet Treats on The Weekend Route (www.theweekendroute.com). Promotion included vlog, blog, social media and website advertising • In efforts to reach people in a way they want to be reached, we started a new visitor e-newsletter. We sent out 2 emails in the fall season to 289 people. o People can sign up for the newsletter in our surveys/QR codes, and on our website Holiday Our `Discover a Hometown Holiday' campaign focused on promoting Clarington's holiday experiences, events and shopping. We promoted Clarington's unique holiday offerings including shopping in our historic downtowns, rural markets and visiting one of our farms to cut down your own tree and have an old-fashioned Christmas experience. The goal of the campaign is to get local residents to shop local and experience their community and to get Durham/GTA residents to come to visit, ultimately spending money and supporting Clarington businesses. We sent a direct mail postcard to homes in Ajax, Oshawa, Peterborough, Pickering, Scarborough, Uxbridge and Whitby for a total of 2683 homes We targeted the same postal codes with our digital advertising. To track the success of this we geotargeted Clarington's downtowns and the businesses promoted on the postcard and digital advertising. o In the month of December 7336 people who saw our digital ad, walked into a geofence location. Top results include: Location # of visits Downtown Bowmanville 2303 Downtown Newcastle 1484 Courtice Flea Market 570 Hope's Christmas Tree Farm 557 Powell's Tree Farm 486 Downtown Orono 333 Tyrone Mills 223 • We did a social media giveaway with Hope's Christmas Tree Farm and it garnered 3,370 impressions. • Two visitor e-newsletters were sent to 289 subscribers • We partnered with Central Counties Tourism in Globe and Mail advertising, "Ultimate Holiday Road Trip" 6. TAC Roundtable Rita shared that although the world is opening up and we are excited, and thinking that tourism will increase, that may not be the case. More and more people are traveling and that means they may be leaving Ontario because there is more competition and options available to them. Durham Tourism is excited about the return of events. Looking forward to bringing back Gates Open this year. Working on promoting the Downtowns of Durham. Durham is working on rural and north Durham cycle routes 7. Other Business April 4, 2022 Municipal staff will be returning to the office. This could bring more people into the downtown during the day for coffee, lunches, shopping. Downtown Bowmanville can expect to see more foot traffic. Staff have shared this with the BIA. Community Information displays in Newcastle, Courtice, South Courtice, Bowmanville are open and we have a request to stakeholders to drop off any print material they would like to promote o We are working with our customer service team within Community Services and prepping them to be tourism ambassadors. Staff have joined their monthly meeting and provided materials to get them up to speed on tourism attractions and coming events. o If you hear of anything new and exciting going on please email tourism@clarington.net so this information can be passed along to ensure we can best assist visitors and residents. • With events starting up again, we will be looking for TAC for support. 8. Date of next meeting: • Date to be confirmed and Ashlee Kielbiski to send information. 9. Motion to adjourn Moved by Marsha Carbon, seconded by Rita Smith. Carried. The meeting concluded at 2:11 p.m