VANCOUVER — Destination Canada (DC) has released the results of its Millennial Travel Program, revealing the program surpassed its goals by a significant margin.
In 2016, DC launched the Millennial Travel Program with Bell Media and 21 industry partners. The domestic-marketing program aimed to inspire Canadian millennials to travel their own country in the lead up to Canada 150 in 2017. The two-year program highlighted some of the best-kept secrets of Canada through videos, stories and influencers.
With this program, DC aimed to reach 4.4-million Canadian millennials, increase millennial travel by five per cent and generate 150,000 leads to partners. At the end of the two-year period, these marketing efforts reached 7.3-million millennials, increased travel by 16 per cent and generated 294,000 leads.
In addition to the social-media impact and a sizable lift in travel, the program positively shifted travel perceptions — significantly more Canadian millennials now say that taking a vacation in Canada by car is easier than they had believed.
The program also included an international extension, which is ongoing. The assets developed for domestic use were adapted for use in eight international campaigns, with an additional $5-million investment. These efforts resulted in approximately 35,000 additional leads to partners and more than 30,000 additional bookings to Canada through travel trade partners.
A case study of the Millennial Travel Program is available at destinationcanada.com.
