For years, Justin Bieber sat outside the Avon Theatre of Stratford with his guitar and busked for change from Stratford Festival attendees.  Today, Bieber is well known around the world as a teen pop star.

Stratford Tourism has been quick to provide the inside scoop on Bieber for families visiting Stratford.  Now visitors to Stratford can see all the places Justin Bieber hung out at on a new tourism map produced by the Stratford Tourism Alliance – Bieberiffic map of Stratford.

The map, a free, downloadable guide to the history and hangouts of the 16-year-old pop sensation, features the schools he attended, his family’s favourite restaurant, hockey arenas and more. The Bieberiffic Map is sure to be a must-have item for families traveling to Stratford with giggly school girls charmed to death by Justin Bieber.

Eugene Zakreski told the Toronto Star, “We wanted to create something that’s kind of funky and cool, that’s fitting for somebody between 10 and 25 and has a different look and feel than what we normally would have on our site. He’s a phenomenon.”

Indeed, at  the Tourism Café we think anytime you create something unique focused on the interests of your ideal guest you are heading in the right direction.

What happens when a nation has a dream and takes collective action? They get stuff done! In 1999 the Canadian Tourism Commission struck a task-force on Learning and Enrichment Travel. They brought together industry and government to examine “How we could raise the base level of tourism in Canada”. Twelve years later we are doing it – complete with a refreshed brand for the Canadian Tourism Commission based on experiences. The 2010 Vancouver Olympics were testimonial to how far we have come as a nation in portraying the richness, diversity and incredible ways to enjoy Canada!

Joggins Fossil Tour

This week, Tourism Nova Scotia released their new Experiential Tool Kit for operators!  It’s hot off the press and free! Check it out, it has great information and worksheets to help you out!  This comes on the heels of a best practices mission to Manitoba where they witnessed how experiential travel can work — an opportunity that will be afforded to delegates attending Rendezvous Canada this year!

Other recent significant milestones and resources (just to name a few as there are so many now) include:

2010 – Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation invested in a customized experiential travel training program in Cypress Hills for their Parks staff and local community members as they look to anchoring experiences into their tourism strategy moving forward. Tucked into the beautiful Cypress Hills Inter-provincial Park, we enjoyed phenomenal training and guest experiences at the Medalta Historic Clay District, the Elkwater Lodge & Resort, and the Historic Reesor Ranch.  Plans to extend this opportunity are under way this year.

2010  Tourism Nova Scotia invested in a best practice mission, hosted by Earth Rhythms, to learn how experiential travel is being brokered with 50 community partners in the rural area around Riding Mountain National Park.

2010-09  Tourism New Brunswick launched their new Inner Journey’s experiential travel brand in April 2009 with a keynote address by Nancy Arsenault on “The Customer is Changing, So Must We” complete with investing in creating ‘experiential market readiness criteria’ for their new Experiences Collection! A year later, they now have 110 new experiences ‘in market’ for visitors in 2010!!
2009  Parks Canada piloted the use of the Explorer Quotient (EQ), a consumer friendly tool developed by the Canadian Tourism Commission in eight sights across Canada. Gros Morne National Park was one of the sites, and now they have a menu of a range of visitor experiences that appeal to nine different types of travellers interests!

2008-09  The Canadian Tourism Commission launched their Experiences Tool Kit for industry, a Photo guide and a number of excellent tools. They can be obtained for free, in French and English through a formal online-request. It takes a little digging around the site and separate requests to get each document, but it is worth the time.

2008  Experience PEI was launched to “create unique, personal experiences designed to provide lifelong memories” and they are doing a smash-up job, complete with community collaboration and working as a collective to “collaborate to compete”.

Zach Saccary, Retired School Teacher and Local Area Story Teller in Norris Point, NL

2007  Tales, Trails and Tunes Festival was launched in the picturesque community of Norris Point Newfoundland. A community collaboration and celebration of the wonderful musical talent of the region blended with daytime walks in spectacular Gros Morne National Park, afternoon workshops with artists and photographers, and evening entertainment by very talented local musicians and storytellers performed in churches, halls, theatres and pubs throughout Norris Point.

2005 – The Gros Morne Institute for Sustainable Tourism was created (GMIST) and the signature course “Edge of the Wedge” that delivers leading edge experiential travel training to Atlantic Canada. Twenty courses, 500+ people later, there are excellent examples of business applying the principles and making a difference!

… since the beginning of this evolution, the Halifax Citadel National Historic Site in partnership with the Halifax Citadel Regimental Association have been developing, offering and expanding the range of experiential travel programs for a wide range of FIT (fully independent travelers) to CMIT (corporate, meeting and incentive travel) groups to the site. They work in multiple sectors and optimize the assets and attributes of the historic site in admirable ways that protect and ‘present’ the site in engaging, meaningful ways, customized to different traveler interests/market segments.

I could go on and back track a decade … but this is just a sample of what is happening in Canada on the experiential tourism product and market development front and there is more to come!

If you are in the tourism industry you know the importance of storytelling to a great guest experience.  Increasing the visitor experience means perfecting this aspect your ‘business to consumer’ (B2C) relations.

What about your B2B ‘business to business’ corporate storytelling capability — the one that builds fans, interest, followers and partners wanting to collaborate or align with you on a different level?  If you are looking to learn from the best, then Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple should be your idol. In the new book by Carmine Gallo title “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience” his three-part framework on how to ‘wow audiences’ is shared:  (1) Create the Story  (2) Deliver the Experience  (3) Refine and Rehearse.  This book is so ‘hot-off-the-press’ it’s copyright is 2010!  If you give a lot of presentations to business, to your guests, at conferences, or within your community, this is a definite must.

If you just want a taster however — “The 10 Ways to Sell you Ideas the Steve Jobs Way” was just posted as a free download by GoToMeeting.  Talk about a clever way to build a data base for your own business by aligning with the best!

Thanks Celes for bringing this to my attention and living our mantra “Collaborate to Compete” which also happens to be a great book by Logan and Stokes if anyone is interested. Together “We” is always stronger, and more rewarding than “Me”.

John Lubbock once wrote “Reading and writing, arithmetic and grammar do not constitute education, any more than a knife, fork and spoon constitute a dinner. “  Similarly tourism is not just a hotel + restaurant + attraction + transportation = vacation!  It is so much more and as businesses in the industry, it is our responsibility to weave together great visitor experiences that engage the senses, bring unique elements of a community to life, and set the stage with places and people for excellent, memorable travel.

We need to move from a ‘packaging’ as the way we think about product development to ’storytelling’ .  What is the story of our region, our community?  What are travellers wanting to learn, discover and immerse themselves in while on vacation?  Never before has it been more critical to ‘listen’ to our guests, then craft experiences for niche markets that provide the best invitation possible to visit Canada. Our job is now the art of weaving together expectations, activities, interactions and delivering on the customer promise at every moment contact – from the time someone thinks about travelling, till the time they are sharing stories back home with their friends.

Pine and Gilmore introduced the concept of the Experience Economy in 1999 and gave us both an economic model with financial rationale, along with four main types of experiences: Entertainment, education, escape, and esthics.  At the Gros Morne Institute for Sustainable Tourism training operators to shift their thinking and adopt new ways of generating business for themselves, and their community has been occurring for five years now!

Linked by themes, aligned with visitor interests, new ways to invite and connect with travelers is happening in wonderful places such as  “Experience PEI”, Gros Morne Adventures and a full suite of 110 new experiences in New Brunswick! Check it out and then ask yourself – what I can I do differently!  How can experiences enrich my business, provide a better travel opportunity for my guests.

I started my day with a cup of fair trade coffee, sunshine pouring into my home, and a morning walk with my wife.  It is November.  It is Remembrance Day.  We see on the media many stories of remembrance, usually about war, or about saving other countries.  What is important is that the stories are told, re-told, and shared and new stories presented.  I was restless, looking for a way to start my day with inspiration.  As often happens, I look to TED for inspiration (the incredible alternative to television that presents the most amazing stories about technology, entertainment, and design).  And, I found something that I knew I needed to share with our tourism partners across the country.

Recently, when reading a short article about global sustainable criteria and accreditation by Justin Francis, whose company ResponsibleTravel.com is known for its small group travel experiences that “make a difference“, he suggested…”..we find tourists are far more interested in the infectious stories in our Making A Difference sections – such as the local guide whose family have lived in the village  for four generations offering a village tour and opportunity to learn to cook local dishes with his family …”  I agree.  I believe that one of the most amazing things about the Internet is that it has empowered us with the possibility to write and share infectious stories.   This, to me, is one of the most important responsibilities in writing good blogs about travel and travel experiences.

Chimamanda Adichie suggests in her poignant and powerful talk on TED called The Danger Of A Single Story, “...That when we reject the single story, when we realize there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise“.   I believe that this is our responsibility as tourism practitioners who wish to bring alive “the authentic travel experiences in our backyards” for travelers – to write infectious stories in which there is never a single story, that we reach in and reveal many stories about many people and many things within our community, and invite our ideal guests to experience our paradise.  I invite you to view Chimamanda’s story at TED.