Canadian City Issues Marketing RFP

The City of Campbell River, a coastal city of over 32,000 people and the third-largest on Vancouver Island has issued a marketing RFP. It is located on the east coast along the important Inside Passage shipping route. Campbell River is the forestry and mining industries’ service centre for the north island. Commercial and recreational fishing also form important components of the local economy, as increasingly do tourism and office commercial/tech sector activity.

The City of Campbell River is inviting submissions from qualified proponents for the provision of managing and operating the City’s visitor servicing to offer visitors excellent tourism and visitor services and providing Destination Marketing and Development Services to promote the City’s many businesses, attractions and events.

The City of Campbell River together with local tourism stakeholders has developed a five-year tourism strategy that embraces a new model for tourism services delivery. This model includes a new governance structure and incremental funding sources as well as a series of strategies designed to deliver measurable results against three primary objectives:

Goal Statement #1 – Destination Marketing

Conduct effective destination marketing in target markets with a focus on generating incremental overnight stays in paid accommodation

Goal Statement #2 – Visitor Servicing

Provide visitors with information where/when/how they need it to support longer lengths of stay and increased spending and educate and train stakeholders and community at-large to deliver remarkable experiences

Goal Statement #3 –Destination Development

Contribute tourism knowledge and expertise to ensure visitor perspective is considered in all significant local projects/ventures

This goal is to ensure Campbell River is increasing its breadth and depth of compelling visitor experiences. The proponent must demonstrate knowledge and expertise in market conditions and opportunities and gaps in the current inventory of experiences and provide insight to the decision and investment making process of other involved in the tourism industry. The successful proponent will provide marketing intelligence for the private sector to support their feasibility analysis and business case development related to tourism ventures.

SCOPE OF WORK

The City of Campbell River expects the proponent to manage destination marketing and development maintain visitor servicing and adhere to the expectations and guidelines set out by Tourism BC for operating visitor servicing.

Destination Marketing & Development

The new tourism strategy’s goal statement #1 focuses on Destination marketing: conducting effective marketing in target markets with a focus on generating incremental overnight stays in paid accommodation. The plan seeks to market Campbell River a s multi-night destination and indicates that both discipline and focus will be required to build momentum and achieve progress towards the vision for tourism in Campbell River.

The vision statement is:

“The people of CR will work in unison to sustainably develop and promote our destination. Together we will create a vibrant, year-round visitor economy that generates jobs, grows tourism businesses and associate revenues, and contributes to the resident quality of life”

A successful destination includes all of the things that attracts visitors from the natural environment, the heritage and culture, iconic buildings, the rental sector, sport, leisure and cultural facilities, food, gardens, events, scenery; all of the things that make CR special, distinctive and of interest and a place worth experiencing.

In order to provide destination marketing services, the proponent must demonstrate how they will:

• Grow awareness of CR as a destination of choice
• Increase visitation
• Increase length of stays
• Increase occupancy levels and higher average daily rates in paid accommodation
• Increase visitor spending in local businesses

The One-Year Tactical Plan provides specific destination marketing and development tactics, implementation plan and performance measures.

• Visitor Servicing
  • Operate and manage operations of the City’s visitor servicing;
  • Greet and assist visitors to the community;
  • Provide accurate, helpful and high quality general and detailed information on attractions and visitor services;
  • Promote local attractions, events and tourism opportunities which motivate visitors to stay longer and spend more money in the community and provide opportunities to extend the visitor season;
  • Sell tourism opportunities, whether through a retail program, reservation and ticket sales, package tour sales, or similar activities;
  • Collect visitor data to determine who visitors are, their origin, their destination, their activities, their length of stay, and their needs;
  • Provide visitor data to community businesses;
  • Encourage development of the tourism industry in the community and educate the community about the value of tourism and the value of the visitor servicing;
  • Answer mail, e-mail, and fax enquiries from prospective visitors;
  • Motivate visitors to make return visits to the community;
  • Promote the community through visitor servicing network members;
  • Optimize tourism services at the visitor servicing by providing appropriate services and products to the community;
  • Optimize marketing resources provided by Tourism BC to attract visitors to Campbell River based on recent tourism studies and potential of the area;
  • Liaise with the business community, user groups, community groups and recommend various programs and service tools, including networking, special events, marketing, infrastructure maintenance, that will strengthen the local tourism vitality for the community;
  • Support the tourism activities of the City;
  • Any other matters that should be considered in the operating of visitor servicing and the destination marketing.

The One-Year Tactical Plan provides specific destination marketing and development tactics, implementation plan and performance measures.

Proposal due by December 22 to:

City of Campbell River City Hall 301 St. Ann’s Road
1st Floor Reception Desk Campbell River, BC V9W 4C7
ATTN: Clinton Crook – Senior Buyer

Major PR firms with a presence in Canada include APCO Worldwide, Porter Novelli and Burson-Marsteller.