This Week in Tourism Marketing

Updates on recent tourism and event campaign posts

Here’s a quick follow-up on two recent tourism marketing campaigns that were featured in the Points of Interest blog.

Groundhog Day 2010 in review

Tuesday was Groundhog Day, and the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania enjoyed a big turn out for their 124th annual celebration. I watched live, streaming video of the festivities on the Official Website of The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club. Punxsy Phil, the Groundhog, was awakened to a sunny morning, and after seeing his shadow, proclaimed there will be six more weeks of winter.

My earlier excitement about the prospects of new “Groundhog vs. Shadow” videos for the 2010 tourism marketing campaign faded behind increasing clouds, however, as only one re-edited video was posted to the PAGroundhog YouTube channel this year. Oh well, only 52 more weeks til next Groundhog Day.

Countdown to Vancouver 2010

As the Winter Olympics draw near, I wanted to address a couple of points made in my last post about the Games.

First, it appears I may have jumped the starting gate when I reported a problem with the Vancouver 2010 Olympics website. At the time, the U.S. Athlete information for Alpine Skiing was missing from the site, but skiers were still competing for spots on the U.S. Olympic team, so it may have been premature to expect a final list of athletes then. My bad.

Second, at last check (2/3) the Vancouver 2010 Olympics Facebook page was up to 354,693 fans.... Two weeks ago, when the number of fans was 304,043, I predicted the page would reach one million fans, but sign-up seems to have slowed. We’ll see how this use plays out – as a social media success story or a Facebook flash in the pan.

And finally, my Olympic highlight this week was an amazing trailer that I saw on YouTube today, promoting the BBC's coverage of the Vancouver Olympics.

This animated masterpiece captures the excitement of the Games, the rugged beauty of the Pacific Northwest and elements of the local Inuit culture in an engaging story of victory against all odds. Check it out.