Review: Vancouver 2010 Olympics Destination Website

Vancouver 2010 is a Destination Website Done Right

In case you haven’t heard, it’s an Olympic year. Beginning February 12, 2010, Vancouver, British Columbia, will host the Winter Olympic Games. I visited the official website the other day, and in my opinion, the Vancouver Olympic Committee (or VANOC) and their partners have created an amazingly well organized, effective and even beautiful destination marketing tool. Sure, the International Olympic Committee marketers have done this before; they’ve created websites for the last ten Olympics probably, but the sites just get better and better.

A website built for heavy-lifting

The Olympic Games are a very complex event, featuring 15 major areas of competition, hundreds of discreet events, and thousands of individual competitors representing countries around the world. The Olympics are big. The website required to communicate the specifics of such an event is equally complex, with literally millions of bits of data to compile, categorize and sort. Yet Vancouver 2010 is both user friendly and welcoming, with an appealing interface and easy-to-use organization.

You want content? You can’t handle the content!

To say there is a lot of content on the Vancouver Olympic site is an understatement. Each sport – 15 major areas of competition – is supported with breaking news, reports on competitors and venues, background information, athlete profiles, terminology, plus videos, photos, audio clips and more. I’m not sure I could navigate and load every page of content before the games end on February 28th, much less digest it all.

Olympic merchandise and adorable mascots

Retailing is another area that the Olympic marketers have down. The online store features hundreds of branded items for sale, from clothing to gifts and collectibles. Of course, the cleverly designed Vancouver mascots are sure to be big sellers. ‘Quatchi’ is a cute, cuddly – wait for it – Sasquatch (yep, that’s the local name for Bigfoot). ‘Mukmuk’ is a marmot (akin to our groundhog). I’m not sure what ‘Miga’ and ‘Sumi’ are, other than really cute. Many of the tchotchkes bearing their likenesses are already out of stock (including the 38” plush Quatchi that sells for $349). Ka-ching.

But can I book my hotel room?

I wondered how deep this site could really go, so I tried to make a hotel reservation. I was almost relieved to find that the “Accommodations” link went to a single page, which served up a very honest overview of tourism prospects. It said, in essence, that the Olympics are the largest event the region has hosted, demand is high, and visitors may need to stay in outlying areas. The page directs visitors to other websites to book accommodations (including VANOC’s tourism partners’ website and www.HelloBC.com). I believe that if the Olympic site tried to add booking capabilities, the Internet may have crumbled around us.

Well, sure, there are going to be problems

With all the information in this site, something has to give. When I went to the Athlete information for Alpine Skiing today (1/20), I was surprised to find that there were no athletes from the United States listed. Hmmm. Either the website has a problem or our highly-competitive team of ski racers chose to stay home and watch NASCAR racing. Maybe the web developers didn’t get the ‘U’s yet.

Too much for a single blog post

I could go on and on about the many strengths and seemingly few weaknesses of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic website and the marketing surrounding the games. I’d be interested to learn more about the logistics of such a site: the lead time, the manpower resources and operating budget. Then there’s the social media aspect to explore: Vancouver 2010 has 304,035 Facebook fans as of a minute ago (now 304, 043). I expect that number to top one million by February 1st (now 304,048). I may explore some of these topics in subsequent posts – but for now I’ll leave you with this: Rock on, Vancouver 2010, and GO USA! (Now 304,361 Facebook fans and counting.)