SEVEN DAYS WITH THE GIANT RETURNS

Tourism Thunder Bay, in association with local and regional tourism organizations and operators, is bringing back Canada’s ultimate outdoor adventure campaign–Seven Days With The Giant.

This summer, one lucky winner and three friends will enjoy an all expense paid weeklong adventure exploring the city and North Shore region. Winners will start with paid return airfare from anywhere in North America, digital camera package, camping gear and a beautiful Thunder Bay print. From there, they will create their own adventure with the assistance of Lake Superior Visits to include exploring Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, Kakabeka Falls, Fort William Historical Park, sailing and angling on Lake Superior, mountain biking, hiking, culinary and cultural adventures, and many more customizable outdoor and urban activities.

This year’s program, valued at over $15 000, expands to include, not only Thunder Bay experiences but those from the Dorion and Nipigon areas as well, opening up even more opportunities for the winners to explore the variety of adventures that suit their tastes and abilities. The campaign’s target reach is also evolving to focus on more experiential Canadian and US travel media including Explore Magazine, National Geographic, Canadian Geographic, AAA Living, Lake Superior Magazine, Northern Wilds and Canoe and Kayak print and digital media channels.

This year’s sponsors include Ontario Parks, Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Culture, OTMPC, Best Western Norwester Hotel and Conference Centre, National Car Rental, Lake Superior Visits, Fort William Historical Park, Gear Up for Outdoors, SailSuperior.com, Epic Adventures, Lot 66, Caribou, 5 Forks, Thunder Bay Observatory, Archie’s Charters, Golf Thunder Bay, and many other local and regional visitor experience providers.

“The Seven Days With the Giant” campaign began four years ago and has become a popular foundation of our marketing strategy, drawing interest from avid outdoor adventure seekers. The program weaves our connection to the natural environment with our great urban culture and contributes to our vision to become regarded as Canada’s Best Outdoor City. This year, the program has expanded to showcase some of the exciting regional experiences beyond our city limits and utilizes some of North America’s most respected outdoor adventure media to attract avid travelers to our area.

Contest entry is available online at http://www.visitthunderbay.com/ beginning at 12 noon, Tuesday February 15, 2011 and ends at 12 Midnight, May 31, 2011.

For more information, email me @ ppepe@thunderbay.ca or call me @ (807) 625-3880

WIN SEVEN DAYS WITH THE GIANT!

Tourism Thunder Bay, in partnership with over 15 tourism industry partners, is once again offering one winner and three guests the opportunity to win the ultimate week long outdoor adventure in Thunder Bay this summer.

Now in its third year, ”Seven Days With the Giant” capitalizes upon our connection to the iconic geography of the Sleeping Giant, our intimate connection to Lake Superior and the unique cultural and culinary experiences in and around the city. This year’s grand prize, valued at over $12 000, generates significant interest through the North American avid outdoor community, positioning Thunder Bay as one of North America’s best outdoor cities.

Avid outdoor enthusiasts who live outside of the Thunder Bay area are encouraged to visit the contest entry site at VisitThunderBay.com beginning noon on February 11, 2010 until 12:00 AM midnight, May 31, 2010. Winners will be selected in June 2010 with an August 2010 experience redemption period.

This year’s partners include Ontario Parks, Parks Canada, Best Western Norwester Resort, OTMPC, Enterprise Car Rental, Gear Up for Outdoors, Golf Thunder Bay, Archie’s Charters, Thunder Bay Observatory, Masala Grille, Caribou, Lake Superior Visits, Fort William Historical Park, Founder’s Pioneer Village, and many other attractions and businesses.

For 2010, changes to the campaign will increase appeal to a wider range of outdoor experience seekers and offers the winners the opportunity to customize their adventure by selecting a wider range of outdoor and cultural experiences. This year’s campaign is central to our summer leisure marketing program and will include a strong social media component, utilizing Facebook, blogs and Twitter to reach targeted outdoor enthusiasts. Social media users are encouraged to follow along and invite their friends to join in and re-tweet news relating to the campaign.

“Seven Days with the Giant continues to weave our incredible natural environment around the city with our eclectic urban culinary and cultural attractions to create an atmosphere that positions us as destination as exotic as anywhere else on earth.” according to Thunder Bay Tourism Manager Paul Pepe.

A media and partnership launch for the event takes place on Thursday February 11, 2010 at 11 AM at Fort William Historical Park’s Visitor Centre.

BACKGROUND

“Seven Days With the Giant” began in 2008 and was featured as the Great Ontario Outdoor Adventure of a Lifetime program with the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation to capitalize upon Sleeping Giant Provincial Park being recognized as one of Canada’s best natural wonders in the 2007 CBC “Seven Wonder’s of Canada” contest that saw the park receive more online votes than Niagara Falls.

Tourism Thunder Bay re-introduced the campaign in 2009 based on overwhelming response in the first year and the desire by consumers and partners alike, to continue participating.

In its two first years, the campaign has generated over 32 000 entries from across North America.

The campaign is unique in that it represents a rare partnership between a major city and its parks partners. It beings benefits the community’s urban tourism partners by weaving natural environment attractions with a community’s culinary and cultural attractions. The model was featured at the 2008 International Eco and Sustainable Tourism Conference.

For 2010, Seven Days With the Giant returns with changes that appeal to a wider range of outdoor enthusiasts by allowing them to custom design their week long vacation in Thunder Bay. Winners will be able to select from a number of optional activities such as golfing, angling, amethyst mine tours, hiking, mountain biking, flight seeing, farm tours and other activities to create their perfect experience.

2010 project partners include the following
Tourism Thunder Bay – Lead promoter
Ontario Parks – Park access to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park
Parks Canada – interpretive support
Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership – marketing support
Best Western Norwester Resort -2 nights accommodation
Enterprise Car Rental – 1 week car rental
Golf Thunder Bay – round of golf for 4 and 2 cart rentals
Masala Grille – dinner for 4
Caribou – Dinner for 4
Gear Up for Outdoors – camping gear set
Archie’s Charters – ½ day Lake Superior Fishing Charter
Lake Superior Visits – Tour coordination
Fort William Historical Park – park passes
Founder’s Pioneer Village – attractions passes

Other partners continue to join the program and are being added to the on line throughout the campaign.

Online entry is available at www.VisitThunderBay.com and opens at noon EST, Thursday February 11, 2010. The contest closes at midnight, May 31, 2010. Prize redemption period is August 1 to September 6, 2010.

for more information on getting involved, contact me at ppepe@thunderbay.ca

SEVEN DAYS WITH THE GIANT WINNERS EXPERIENCE SUPERIOR BY NATURE HOSPITALITY

Tourism Thunder Bay is pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Seven Days With the Giant promotion, our signature summer tourism marketing campaign developed to showcase the city and area as one of Canada’s best outdoor cities to outdoor enthusiasts across North America.

This year’s winners, Bob Greer of Maplewood Minnesota and his wife Kathy invited their two friends from Texas, Jack and Jeanette Hammon, to experience all the Giant has to offer. While here, they’ve explored the park with their new Nikon cameras and binoculars while trying out their new camping equipment, enjoyed Thunder Bay’s unique cultural attractions, unique and first class accommodations and iconic culinary treats, enjoyed both a sailboat and floatplane adventure on Superior and will complete their visit to the city with an epic dinner hosted by Caribou Restaurant and Wine Bar.

Tourism Thunder Bay wishes to extend its thanks to all of the sponsors who made this year’s contest and campaign possible. The sponsors include the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation, Ontario Parks, Lake Superior Visits(tour coordination and guiding), Valhalla Inn (accommodation), Sailsuperior.com (sail charter and accommodation), Wilderness North (float plane adventure), Caribou Restaurant and Wine Bar (dinner), National and Enterprise Car rentals (vehicle rentals), Gear Up for Outdoors (equipment package), The Hoito, Thunder Bay Historical Society, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Superior Outdoors magazine, Ruby Moon, Fort William Historical Park, Imagetech and Amethyst Mine Panorama.

Media are invited to the Valhalla Inn at 9:30 AM on Friday August 21st to meet with Bob, his wife and friends before they depart the city for home.

Tourism Thunder Bay March News

New 2008 Visitor Experience Magazine


The new 2008 Experience Thunder Bay magazines are in print and available as of March 7th. The 84 page glossy magazine features more information, editorial content and community resources, making it a key publication for visitors and residents alike. last year, 110 000 paper copies and 31 000 electronic copies found their way into visitors hands and screens. The new single guide replaces two separate guides from previous years. They will be available in most accommodation providers, key retail and regional travel centers by Mid March.

In addition to local outlets at hotels, airport and bus terminals, visitor centers and fuel stations, the guides are also distributed to all Provincial Travel Information Centers in the Province, and key regional travel centers and strategic high volume service stations west towards Manitoba, east of Thunder Bay as well as along the North Shore of Minnesota.

Approximately 25 000 copies will find their way into delegate packages over the following year and over 10 000 are distributed at various consumer and industry travel shows, through Tourism Thunder Bay and partners North of Superior Tourism, Ontario's North and individual businesses attending shows where they wish to promote the city as Ambassadors of the community.

If you would like additional copies or would like to include them in conference delegate packages, please email rtarnowski@thunderbay.ca.

The 2008 Meeting planner has been reprinted for another 6000 copy run for 2008 and our new Group tour planner is expected to be in circulation by mid June.


Web Visitation

Tourism Thunder Bay's consumer website, http://www.visitthunderbay.com/ continues to post strong growth over 2007 and prove why it is Tourism Thunder Bay's #1 marketing tool. February 2008 saw 16,786 unique visitors to the site and 29,741 visits. Year to date shows over 36,683 unique visitors and 66,238 visits, representing a 34% growth year to date over 2007.

Visitor Center Stats

Currently, The Terry Fox visitor center is fullfilling over 100 consumer requests weekly for our visitor guide and an average of 400 conference packages weekly are being prepared. Walk in traffic for the month of February shows a modest increase of 10% over February 2007. Even in the middle of winter, we are averaging some 38 visitors to the center daily as well as emails and 1-800 calls

Seven Days Update

The Seven Days with the Giant campaign was unveiled at the opening of the Toronto Outdoor Show March 22nd. The Honourable Minister of Natural Resources Donna Canfield, Ontario Parks Managing Director Adair Ireland-Smith, Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation CEO Robin Garrett, Manager of Tourism Thunder Bay Paul Pepe and renowned adventurer Gary McGuffin unveiled the campaign to the Toronto market and spoke of the allure that is the Sleeping Giant.

The support of the Federal and Provincial governments as well as the many participating businesses has made this awareness building campaign a success. Seven Days with the Giant continues to attract hundreds of entries entries daily and will be featured at Canoecopia in Madison Wisconsin March 7-9 and the Midwest Mountaineering Show in Minneapolis. Displays promoting the campiagn are in full swing at all Mountain Equipment Co-op stores across Canada as well. A special thanks goes out to Bill Ostrom of Ostrom Outdoors for displaying cards and calanders at his booth at the Madison show, in addition to the contest being promoted at the Ontario Parks display.

The campaign has been an enourmous success in raising the profile of Thunder Bay as a destination. Tourism Thunder Bay is already planning a 2009 version of Seven Days with the Giant. If you want to be part of the campaign for next year, please e-mail me at ppepe@thunderbay.ca. We will be hosting an event partners meeting in mid April to begin planning and budgeting for the 2009 leisure campaign.

Cruise Ship Attraction Program

Tourism Thunder Bay will be part of the Great Lakes Cruising Coalition's presence at Seatrade 2008, the world's foremost annual gathering of cruise industry executives, ship owners, managers and tour operators. We will be attending the event in Miami Beach from March 11-13 working to promote Lake Superior as a destination for cruise operators, focusing on smaller expedition type vessels and itineraries. In addition we will be learning new travel trends in cruising and cruise ship itinerary development and shoreside services and terminal development. In addition to promoting the Port of Thunder Bay and all our attractions, our work will benefit other communities such as Sault Ste Marie, Duluth and Marquette, Lake Superior's other major port cities.

Tourism Thunder Bay, in partnership with the Thunder Bay Port Authority, is a member of the Creat Lakes Cruising Coalition, a collective of 26 port cities, counties, States and Provincial partners working to further the development of the cruising industry on the Great Lakes.

Thunder Bay will also be a stop for a cruise industry familiarization tour in mid June where we will be showing various Great Lakes ports to up to 7 cruise industry executives. This program has been made possible by the financial support of the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund and the Investment Development Office of the Ministry of Tourism.

Facebook Update

VisitthunderBay.com, our Facebook group continues to grow by 5-7 members daily. In addition to the daily updates posted by our visitor services staff, weekly e-news updates are sent to all members advertising ski conditions, cultural attractions, accommodation packages and more. To get involved, search Visitthunderbay on Facebook or e-mail your event to visit@thunderbay.ca

Staff Changes

Kathy Ball, Tourism Thunder Bay's Development Officer, has accepted a secondment with the Waterfront Development office effective February 21st. She will be applying her expertise towards the complex role of coordinating funding applications and sponsorships for the project. Tourism Thunder Bay expects to backfill the position shortly.

Meeting and Convention News

As part of Tourism Thunder Bay's enhanced focus on key corporate markets, we will be working to attract the corporate business of the numerous mining and exploration companies in Canada. We will be at the Northwestern Ontario Mining Symposium April 8-9, 2008 to promote Thunder Bay to the attending firms, encouraging them to host more meetings and conferences in the city. We will also be following up with direct campaigns to Canada's major exploration companies.

This represents our enhanced strategy to target firms and organizations who have Thunder Bay offices, encouraging them to have their regional, Provincial or National meetings and conferences in the community.

If your local office is looking to host your organization's conference in the city, we provide delegate packages. In addition, we loan our display backdrops free of charge (on a first come-first serve basis) so you can promote the city as a location for upcoming events. The Ontario Fur Trappers, Retired Teachers of Ontario and others have already taken advantage of this great promotional program. Please contact Rose Marie Tarnowski at rtarnowski@thunderbay.ca for more information on conference services provided or to book our display for your upcoming event.

New Creative Agency

Tourism Thunder Bay is pleased to announce that Generator Advertising has been selected as our new Creative Agency of Record. Generator will begin assisting us in the development of new creative advertising strategies centered around the leisure, corporate, group and sports tourism segments. We'll be focusing more on a continuation of unique contest based campaigns and web based marketing strategies.

Travel Media Update

We are currently entertaining inquiries from travel writers seeking rock climbing, saunas and kayaking experiences and hope to have some familiarization tours in place by early June 2008. We will also be expanding upon our program started in 2007 to provide Familiarization experiences for local and regional writers to encourage them to write and sell their stories to the myriad of travel and experience based print and on line media. More information will follow in coming months.

Group Touring Update

Cathy Pressenger, Tourism Thunder Bay's group tour coordinator, recently attended the Ontario Motorcoach Operators Association annual show and will be at the American Bus Association Heartland show, promoting Thunder Bay and regional itineraries to motorcoach operators. For more information on these activities, please contact Cathy at cpressenger@thunderbay.ca. There is a resurgance in Lake Superior evident at the Ontario show and key U.S. midwest markets are still interested in the product, despite the U.S. border identification requirements.

Ontario's North

Thunder Bay, along with Sudbury, Timmins, North Bay and Sault Ste Marie, comprise Ontario's North, a tourism marketing partnership that focuses on key media attraction and leisure, group and corporate marketing initiaitives to promote Northern Ontario. The group is chaired by Tourism Thunder Bay. Funding for the consortium is a partnership involving Fednor, Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership, Northern Ontario Heritage Fund and the Cities themselves. We'll endeavour to keep you posted on upcoming new campaigns and initiatives.

Book Tourism Thunder Bay for your next Meeting

Tourism Thunder Bay is always pleased to help share industry news and developments with the community. We have recently made presentations to the following groups.

• Heart of the Harbour BIA Annual General Meeting
• Thunder Bay Executives Association
• Lakehead University School of Outdoor Recreation, Parks and Tourism
• Confederation College Business Program
• Founder's Pioneer Village Annual General Meeting

The Thunder Bay Tourism Partners blog is a community site to share industry news. If tyhere is anything you wish to share, we are pleased to provide a forum to do so. Please e-mail me your thoughts and suggestions to ppepe@thunderbay.ca.

Tourism Thunder Bay Launches Seven Days in Toronto

Tourism Thunder Bay joined The Minister of Natural Resources, the Honourable Donna Cansfield and the CEO of Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation, Robin Garrett, in opening the 12 annual Toronto Outdoors Show on February 22, 2008, unveiling the Seven Days with the Giant promotion in the Toronto Market. It was also an opportunity to celebrate this very unique and successful marketing partnership.

At the Great Ontario Outdoor Adventure Pavillion, calendars, postcards and live music entertained the approximately 5000 Friday attendees and we were able to promote Thunder Bay as a great Outdoor adventure destination in a venue where motivated travellers gather.
Tourism Thunder Bay provided 20 kg of Thunder Oak Gouda, offering samples and information on the variety of attractions, experiences and culinary wonders of our great city and region.

The show is expected to attract up to 30 000 motivated outdoor experience seekers over the three day run and marks our move towards experience based target markets. Adjacent to our booth is Canadian Geographic and Ontario Parks, where the contest is being promoted heavily. Tourism Thunder Bay and Fort William Historical Park partnered on a series of complimentory advertisements in both the 2008 Ontario Parks Guide and the April Canadian Geographic Travel magazines to support the contest and promote Thunder Bay as a unique destinaton, solidifying our Superior By Nature brand and strengthening our position as one of Canada's great outdoor cities.

Northwestern Ontario is well represented at the show this year by a number of other experience providers including Nipigon River Adventures and Sail Superior, Northern Ontario Native Tourism Association and Souris River Canoes of Atikokan.