Tourism Barrie Case Study
Tourism Barrie Chooses Hot Banana to Display What Barrie Has to Offer
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Background
When Tourism Barrie (www.tourismbarrie.com) first came to Hot Banana they were plagued by a classic dilemma: their Web site consisted of approximately 40 scrolling static pages that were difficult to maintain, did not show up in the Search Engines, and did not provide the analytics needed to track if what they were doing on their site was actually working. Tourism Barrie approached Hot Banana in December 2004 and immediately began to implement a Hot Banana Web Content Management System to combat this.
Since implementing Hot Banana’s Web Content Management System (CMS), Tourism Barrie now considers their Web site one of their main marketing programs. Tourism Barrie and Hot Banana completely re-vamped their Web presence, which has come to be known as the best informational Web site in the county.
Initially, Tourism Barrie's Web marketing program offered over 250 pages of dynamic information for tourists interested in visiting the area. Now, two years later, Tourism Barrie powered by Hot Banana offers over 350 dynamic Web pages and has developed several additional micro sites. The tourism staff are able to maintain this information themselves, on-the-fly, without any technical training or experience with HTML and without relying on any IT staff.
Implementing Micro sites for Tourist Attractions
Over 80% of travelers search for travel and tourist information on the Internet, so for Tourism Barrie, providing online content that is readily available and easily updated is key. Their main site and the micro sites that Tourism Barrie has developed are “organic” which means that their content is dynamic and changes frequently.
One type of micro site they develop is specific to different sectors or travel interests, such as golf (www.golfbarrie.com), fishing, shopping, and “winter fun in Barrie” (www.winterfunbarrie.com). These sites allow them to run niche marketing programs for specific tourist activities, without requiring the programs to come under the Tourism Barrie umbrella.
In 2008, Tourism Barrie will launch its micro sites campaign for small, grassroots businesses (for example, local restaurants) that don’t have the resources—time, money, technical know-how—to develop their own Web site. By partnering with Tourism Barrie, they will be able to have a Web presence, but at a very low cost. The sites are hosted by Tourism Barrie and are built using Hot Banana’s Administration Console. The sites use basic templates provided by Tourism Barrie, which also helps with design, content and visuals.
The ability to create new Web sites with such ease allows Tourism Barrie to create a Web presence for themselves and their partners that is dynamic, highly specialized, easy to update and maintain, and which gives them the ability to consistently meet their visitors’ needs for up-to-date information.
Using Hot Banana as an eMarketing Platform
Some of the other notable benefits that Tourism Barrie has experienced as a result of the content management abilities of the Hot Banana software include:
- The ability to run campaigns and control images that match the branding of traditional print material such as brochures or newspaper ads
- Information that can be maintained on a daily basis by internal staff
- Higher ranking on key Google search terms
Recently, Tourism Barrie launched a monthly email newsletter, called the Barrie Blast, which provides tourists with information and travel promotions for the Barrie area, promoting the many reasons that visitors find Barrie such a desirable vacation destination. Subscribers to this newsletter number in the thousands and it has achieved, on average, an astounding 85% open rate!
A second newsletter goes out to Tourism Barrie’s local partners and details the marketing and other initiatives Tourism Barrie is launching or developing.
The numbers truly tell the story. Tourism Barrie's Web marketing program continues to grow month over month since its launch in March 2005. Their Web traffic has increased by an astounding 400% since they first partnered with Hot Banana, and their traffic has more than doubled from approximately 21,000 visitors a month in October 2005 to over 50,000 in August 2007!
Tourism Barrie’s main site, www.tourismbarrie.com, was chosen Best Tourism Website in 2005 by the Economic Developers Council of Ontario. They also won additional awards for their cooperative marketing program.
According to Kathleen Trainor, Tourism Barrie’s Executive Director, the reason for Tourism Barrie’s success is, to a great extent, their Web sites. “Our Web sites and micro sites are all created by us, not some agency hundreds of miles away. We’re the experts in tourism and what’s going on in the area, and we have control over the content, not a third party. With Hot Banana, our Web site content is always up-to-date and can be easily modified whenever necessary. It is a pleasure to do business with Hot Banana and work on their system everyday.”
For more information about Tourism Barrie visit www.tourismbarrie.com.
