168 replies to this topic

[AllseeingEye]

This is just silly plain and simple; "greater" Victoria barely has a population of 380,000 give or take a nickel. IOW its tiny from a global perspective. Lilliputian in fact. "Greater Victoria" - the CRD if you prefer - includes the geographic area from Finlayson Arm to the eastern shore of Sooke Harbour to the Saanich Peninsula.

 

Administratively and geographically it is a lot smaller for example than Greater London (UK), which has roughly nine million people and is slightly more than twice as large in square mileage terms. London - which I presume most people have heard of - has from an administrative standpoint several bodies known variously as Greater London, the City of London, the Greater London Authority, the London Assembly, the City of London Corporation, and the Greater London Built-Up Area....

 

Regardless we and rest of the planet know it simply as !London! Period. Full Stop. End of Sentence.

 

Whenever I've run into a local when travelling not one person has ever said in response to the question, "Oh I'm from View Royal/Oak Bay/Central Saanich!!!" They're all uniformly from Victoria FFS. For crying out loud grow up Victoria. You want to be recognized as truly world class city and tourist destination? Then at least make an attempt to put on your big boy pants and sit at the table with the grown ups. Because its crap like this that makes this burgh continue to look like Podunk or Mayberry on the world stage.....

[Mike K.]

There must be confusion over Victoria, Texas.

[Nparker]

...Whenever I've run into a local when travelling not one person has ever said in response to the question, "Oh I'm from View Royal/Oak Bay/Central Saanich!!!" They're all uniformly from Victoria ...

This is what I have maintained for years. Whenever locals leave the island, our region is amalgamated in their minds. Why is it so hard to make this happen in the real world?

[Mike K.]

Forget Victoria, most say they’re from Vancouver.

[thaicobb]

Poor marketing from another standpoint.  To a resident of more than a few of the world's largest metropolitan areas, a trip from one end of the greater metropolitan area to the other is a 100 - 200 km trip.  This branding may suggest to a tourist from London, New York, Shanghai, or LA that hailing a cab in downtown to go to Butchart may result in a $300+ fare.

[aastra]

 

This branding may suggest to a tourist from London, New York, Shanghai, or LA that hailing a cab in downtown to go to Butchart may result in a $300+ fare.

 

Exactly, that's one of my main points here. The city is compact and offers a ton of stuff to see and do within its cozy confines. The neighbourhoods are neighbourhoods, they aren't remote destinations or special side trips. So why try to foster the misleading impression that things are spread out and/or disparate?

[AllseeingEye]

Exactly, that's one of my main points here. The city is compact and offers a ton of stuff to see and do within its cozy confines. The neighbourhoods are neighbourhoods, they aren't remote destinations or special side trips. So why try to foster the misleading impression that things are spread out and/or disparate?

...and that reminds me of yet another branding point which I've never ever understood: were I a tourist who had never been here before I swear my impression of this place would be that (a) there is an old hotel (which serves a horrifically overpriced tea service) and b) whatever the local Victoria equivalent is to my home state or province capitol building - because decade over decade it seems all pictorial literature of Victoria shows nothing but the Empress Hotel and the Leg - why?

 

Its as if the marketing geniuses are afraid to acknowledge there is an honest to goodness *city* here in behind the faux Olde Englande facade, complete with malls, contemporary architecture and (even, heaven forbid, in 2018) some semi-tallish buildings.

 

Which is interesting given that those folks clearly believe that is what tourists come to see - yet barely a couple of years ago on a major and very well known British tourist site I read precisely the opposite: the writer's comment, rather damning in tone, was "....that any place whose main claim to fame is a musty old hotel really isn't worth the bother" of more than an overnight visit. Instead they heavily promoted Vancouver and especially Whistler. Victoria in their view was a very distant third place in terms of reasons to visit BC.

[Bingo]

The problem with that is, you mention Victoria. Ideally you wouldn't mention or show Victoria at all in Victoria's promotional materials.

 

I liked the old slogan "Follow the Birds to Victoria", not follow the birds to Langford or Sidney or the Hartland dump, as those were all secondary side trips once you arrived on the Princess Marguerite with the seagulls following.

[Victoria Watcher]

let's face it, what the tourism department faces to the customers is not what they mostly see anyway.  they see private business websites, not the $8 million/year government-run one.  when was the last time you went to tourism vancouver, los angeles or miami or new york or toronto for your information?

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 16 September 2018 - 03:07 PM.

[Bingo]

There must be confusion over Victoria, Texas.

 

Or Victoria, Australia.

[johnk]

Or Victoria, Australia.

Paris, Texas, comes to mind also.
I live in OB. My mail comes addressed as "Victoria". I tell come-from-aways I live in Victoria. That's the place people across Canada recognize. If they have been here they might ask "Where in Victoria?"
CRD is meaningless, a political/ bureaucratic confection with all the appeal of a three-page memo. Our other municipality names likely elicit, "Huh?"
No one goes to Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto or Halifax to visit Burnaby or Etobicoke or Verdun or Bedford unless they have family or friends there, or there is a compelling attraction like Butchart.
We have a jewel of a city, there should be no difficulty marketing it... if you have a few clues.

Edited by johnk, 17 September 2018 - 01:12 AM.

[Bingo]

Tourism Victoria was a far better name.  

 

I don't think you need the word tourism either. Are folks that are travelling tourists or just visiting with no set itinerary to see touristy places? Sometimes you slide through a town on your way to somewhere else and find a bakery that has the best sausage rolls, and that sort of discovery is what makes a road trip interesting... not some silly slogan.

[Victoria Watcher]

the entire concept is redundant save for the info centre.

[LJ]

Most of the people I meet are golfers, I say Vancouver Island at .......golf course.

[RFS]

https://mobilesyrup....K7HJgPVsu_nVHNg

Short-term rental app Airbnb has signed a first-of-its-kind agreement with Tourism Vancouver to promote the city to travellers.

Read more at MobileSyrup.com: Airbnb, Tourism Vancouver to promote the city as a premier destination

[Bingo]

Most of the people I meet are golfers, I say Vancouver Island at .......golf course.

 

Most people I meet don't golf.

[LJ]

Most people I meet don't golf.

Probably not a good plan to use my method then.

[Rob Randall]

New York Times does a major feature on the Nanaimo Bar and tries to describe the hub city to a global audience:

 

 

 

The Canadian city of Nanaimo, in British Columbia, has been a scrappy outpost of the Hudson’s Bay Company, a coal mining center and a timber town. But its place in history may be forever entwined with its culinary namesake, one of the world’s sweetest treats.
The Nanaimo bar (pronounced nuh-NYE-mo) is a three-layer no-bake square that for the last seven decades or so has been a steadfast source of comfort to Canadians at weddings and funerals, birthdays and bar mitzvahs.

 

https://www.nytimes....ge&section=Food

[mbjj]

Lol...as a kid I always it called The-Nai-Mo. Sure do love Nanaimo bars though. And Nanaimo bar ice cream.

[Rob Randall]

I guess a bar mitzvah is now on my bucket list of things to do. And I will bring Nanaimo bars.