With borders closed, interprovincial travel discouraged, and safety still top of mind during 2021, Niagara Falls Tourism had to turn to an audience they hadn’t needed to speak to in quite a while: Ontarians.

With ongoing reticence to congregate and concerns over safety, Niagara Falls Tourism was worried that even when things opened up, they wouldn’t be able to draw the crowds they used to. Crucial for a destination that relies on tourism for economic stability. How could they convince Ontarians to give a second look to
a familiar destination just down the road?

While Niagara Falls is a destination that holds a special and often nostalgic place in the hearts of Ontarians, they discovered that it was pretty far down on the list of destinations to travel for their first trip after lockdown, and their research backed it up.

Folks all over Ontario were waiting with bated breath to take their first trip after lockdown. And Niagara Falls was pretty far down the list. The reality is that the Falls hold a different place in the hearts of Ontarians. Memories, sure, but also words like passe, maybe even cliché, and cheesy.

So they had a challenge. How could they convince Ontarians to give a second look to a familiar destination just down the road?

Well that’s it. Down the road.

Niagara Falls is close enough that you can just get in your car and go spontaneously. And it’s far enough to feel like you actually went somewhere. Honestly, that’s a pretty powerful truth. And it led to some incredibly simple, but massively effective films.

Since Ontarians weren’t going to be sold by glamour shots of the Falls or neon-lit scenes of Clifton Hill, they didn’t show them. Instead they created two short TV spots that showed people just coming home from a trip to Niagara Falls, still sitting in their driveways, bathing in the afterglow of a trip that maybe, just maybe won’t end if you don’t open the door.

Instead of showing the Falls, they just showed the feeling that all of us, every Ontarian, was most craving. That feeling that you’ve come home from a trip. A feeling, it turns out, you can get by going to a pretty great spot just down the road.

These films were effective at driving overnight bookings to Niagara Falls. The overall campaign exceeded expectations, with the creative driving high view-through rates (people actually watching the video) and a combination of digital and broadcast driving incredible reach and engagement.

The digital highlights? 77 million ad impressions, over 247,000 clicks to niagarafallstourism.com, 17,000 banner clicks, and 7,160 trip form submits. Their traditional broadcast highlights included over 150 million ad impressions reaching over 85% of their key markets in the greater GTA.

In a season where there were no American visitors, zero international travelers, and nearly zero interprovincial guests, these films resulted in Niagara Falls increasing bookings on niagarafallstourism.com by 131% with only 62% of their visitors available to them, their local Southern Ontario audience.

That increase wasn’t even over the previous year, also during the pandemic. That’s a 131% increase over the same period in 2019, their benchmark year for recovery. When borders were open and capacities weren’t restricted.

The two films were shot for only CAD 75k with an additional $897k in ad spend.

Over the course of the campaign period, the revenue generated based on the 217k+ conversions they drove totalled over $35MM in overnight bookings for Niagara Falls Tourism. So the amount of revenue they helped generate for every advertising dollar spent was $36.04.