ST. JOHN'S, N.L. —
In a year when most beds were left empty, hotels in Atlantic Canada are looking to sell the public on more than just rooms.
With conventions, festivals and other in-person events not happening as they would normally because of the COVID-19 pandemic, hotels have turned their attention toward staycationers and folks enjoying travel in the Atlantic bubble. One way they're trying to reach them is by promoting experiences.
In New Brunswick, the Saint John Hotel Association recently launched a project called Base Camp Saint Awesome through the website basecampsaintawesome.holiday. It promotes hiking trails, swimming spots and other attractions in Saint John and areas within a one-hour drive from the city.
"We really focused on how do we get our hidden treasures out there," said Paulette Hicks, president of the association. "We recognize that in a typical tourism season, we would be promoting our iconic tourism attractions — festivals, things to do. But (this summer) we recognized we're really marketing mainly to our province and that we needed to think about our hidden treasures. When you check into a hotel, our guests will say, 'What do locals do here? What do we really do here?' It's really the bellman that would say, 'You have to go to this point for hiking,' or, 'You have to go to this beach. It's not a public beach, but it's a really great place to hike.'"
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Its members have collaborated on marketing projects in the past, but never to this level. Over the course of the first 30 days of the pandemic, Hicks said, the number of cancellations substantially outpaced new bookings.
"April and May were devastating," she said, noting the Saint John market was below five per cent occupancy for both months.
It did not take long for the 11 hotels involved with the association to realize they needed to work together.
"Short-term, we knew we had to restabilize our expectations — that the volume of people we're used to, certainly going through spring and summer, would be very different. ... We wanted to have good messaging around safety, but also that this would be a great opportunity to get to know your province."
Beer badge
Among the initiatives Base Camp Saint Awesome has taken on is the creation of a new badge for users of the popular beer mobile app Untapped. The Two Rivers Beer Route badge can be obtained by checking in at any three participating sites. The route starts in Hampton and continues southwest along the Kennebecasis River to Saint John, with an additional stop in Sussex. The idea for the badge — available until Oct. 13 — came from local marketing agency Duke Creative Collective.
"We know people really enjoy the craft beers, and we have a number of craft beer operators, so what a great way to promote our operators and at the same time, make it a tour," Hicks said.
South of New Brunswick, the Hotel Association of Nova Scotia has worked closely with Discover Halifax on ways to make experiences a selling point for reservations. The latter's Heart.Soul.Halifax! initiative has placed an emphasis on experiences within the the heart of the city and beyond, featuring recommendations on staycations and weekend getaways that also suggest options for where people can spend the night.
Ross Jefferson, Discover Halifax's president and CEO, says more than half of overnight visitations to Halifax — 57 per cent — typically come from people living within the Maritime provinces.
"It's a unique market," he said. "They don't need as much time to prepare in advance. It's not like a fly-and-drive market where somebody needs to take three or four months in advance preparation. There's a lot less preparation for these people to consider taking a visit to a destination."
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For those travellers in particular, there's lots of interest in experiences and things to do, Jefferson said.
"(Halifax Regional Municipality) by size is quite a large piece of territory — larger than P.E.I." he said. "Within that area, we've got a whole bunch of different experiences."
There are many natural attractions locally, and Jefferson noted there remains a lot of activity in the downtown core when it comes to restaurants, waterfront attractions and musical performers.
"We're really combining both the urban and the off-the-beaten-path experiences that we're promoting today."
Newfoundland market
It's a similar story for hotels in Newfoundland and Labrador. Steve Denty, chair of Hospitality Newfoundland and Labrador, points to partnerships between businesses that previously never would have considered teaming up and developments likes the pedestrian mall on Water Street in downtown St. John's as prime evidence that good things can come from thinking outside the box. And he hopes these sorts of ventures carry over to subsequent tourism seasons when the world is a little bit more ordinary.
"This is the summer to take big swings," said Denty.
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In St. John's, hotels are promoting shop-and-stay packages and partnering with restaurants and bars. Others have offered gas and dining gift cards or discounts for multi-night stays.
While it's still a challenging time for the industry, Denty said there are definitely more people out and about recently on vacations, with many residents of the province deciding to take advantage of staycation options.
"I think what you're seeing is operators from all over the province trying to enhance the experience and keep those guests just a little bit longer," he said. "To spend more money in the region at partner businesses. All around the province, we've seen that could be everything from kayaking and yoga, fishing, hiking, picnics — a lot of stuff where maybe this wouldn't be the thing you would normally do to explore a particular region. But I think you've seen accommodators and their partners get creative to make the stay more enjoyable and make it a full experience to make them stay longer."
Hicks says business has picked up of late. They're now forecasting 50 per cent occupancy for the month of August in the Saint John market.
"We believe this program has done exactly what we intended to do," she said. "The expectations of going through summer and having 80, 90 per cent occupancy, we recognized that wasn't going to happen. We reset our expectations."
Hicks also credits the provincial government for helping out the tourism industry in general through its rebate program, which allows residents to get a 20 per cent rebate on expenses incurred — up to a limit of $1,000 — during trips involving overnight stays.
"That has really created some stimulus in our economy as well," she said.
For the week of July 26 to Aug. 1, Halifax recorded 12,000 room nights sold, at an average of 1.7 people per room.
"It's still down significantly from past years, but it is a significant step up from being virtually closed four months ago," Jefferson said. "We're starting to see a lot of life come back here to the community right now."
