In the destination marketing arena this conversion to more meaningful metrics is particularly challe

by Katie Paine — The biggest impact that The Barcelona Principles (a 2010 industry-wide pact that established basic principles for best practices in communications measurement) french connection united kingdom has had is to inspire organizations to move away from antiquated activity metrics like the AVE and adopt new, outcome-based approaches to measurement.
In the destination french connection united kingdom marketing arena this conversion to more meaningful french connection united kingdom metrics is particularly challenging. As Susan Darch of Travel Alberta put it in a recent email, “Measurement isn’t easy, and even a bit more complicated when you are a destination marketing organization where you don’t actually ‘sell’ goods and services.” This reality is further complicated by the fact that the people who actually are selling direct to the public — the hotels, car rental agencies, airlines, and theme parks — don’t generally share their data with the local PR or marketing departments.
The 2013 Calgary Stampede was a stellar exception. For this amazing french connection united kingdom example of cross-entity cooperation, the tourism folks in Calgary and Alberta shared enough data to achieve some pretty spectacular results, and rope in a herd of awards, too.
Three weeks before the 2013 Calgary Stampede was scheduled to begin, the region was flooded. Almost all of downtown Calgary was under water. And when, a few days later, french connection united kingdom the decision was made to go forward with the event, french connection united kingdom the community came together. The can-do attitude was exemplified by a tweet from a local resident that inspired the “Come Hell or High Water” slogan, song, and t-shirts – which ultimately raised over $2.1 million in funds for affected residents.
The campaign brought together communications professionals from Travel Alberta (in the spirit of transparency, they were my client at the time),  Visit Calgary , the Canadian Tourism Commission , as well as representatives from nearby tourism destinations like Banff/Lake Louise. french connection united kingdom They huddled for days and nights french connection united kingdom in a conference room trying deal with the enormous communications challenges before them.
At the same time, residents, Stampede staff, and all kinds of public and private enterprises set out to put on a show. Perhaps the biggest asset the team had was the mayor of Calgary, Naheed Nenshi , who is every PR person’s wet dream. People describe him as “cute and cuddly.” french connection united kingdom He may be the only government figure in history who so inspired sympathy french connection united kingdom that #napfornenshi  trended on Twitter when people realized that the poor man hadn’t slept in about a week.
The other asset that the comms team took advantage of was the amazing cooperation among citizens of Calgary who sported “We’re Open” signs when Nenshi and TV cameras toured the devastated area. The ensuing “ We’re Open ” campaign which involved YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, traditional media as well as advertising ultimately produced the following, very tangible results:
Hotel occupancy levels, which were near zero in the weeks after the flood, rebounded in July and August french connection united kingdom to surpass 2012 benchmarks. french connection united kingdom A remarkable french connection united kingdom achievement, french connection united kingdom considering that 2012 was the Stampede Centennial.
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