Tourism plays a critical role in Ontario’s economy. Pre-pandemic, the tourism industry generated more than $36 billion annually, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs in the province. As one of the first industries to shut down – and one of the last to begin recovery – the pandemic has been catastrophic to the industry, here in Ontario, and across the globe.

As borders began to reopen, every single tourism board across the planet was eager to bring back international travellers and convince them to travel to their region for their first big trip in two years.

How could Ontario – a small, relatively unknown destination on the global stage – compete with
everything the world has to offer?

Travel has undergone a major shift; rather than being about inner, personal growth it is now driven by outward connections and togetherness.

They decided to tap into the people who needed togetherness more than anyone: friends and family who
had not been together in over two years. They positioned Ontario as the perfect place
for their post-COVID reunions.

Introducing Discover Together, an integrated campaign targeting European travellers with a connection to Canada. To engage their target, they created emotional stories told by their loved ones
who had resettled in Ontario.

The campaign started with a series of films on YouTube and social media that focused on newcomers to Ontario, taking a journey across the province, highlighting all of the experiences they hope to soon take their families on, as soon as the opportunity arises.

Because people are more likely to take travel advice from those that they trust, they created even more digital content from these newcomers, highlighting individual activities and unexpected finds. They targeted these pieces based on interest and location data. So if you are in London and you love food – they served you content from Brits living in Ontario, going to their favourite Toronto restaurants.

Finally, when their target indicated that they were interested in what Ontario has to offer, market-specific landing pages generated custom travel itineraries with offers from their tour operators. They used quick, thumb-stopping videos and stills from their YouTube videos to connect back to the original awareness pieces and drive people to those custom landing pages on the Ontario Tourism website.

They perfectly timed the release of their campaign to inspire travel at the exact moment international restrictions began to lift. This strategy, together with their insight and emotionally driven creative helped the Discover Together campaign to be a major success. 23% of all people who saw their content travelled or booked a trip to Ontario as a result of the campaign, while 18% of people who saw their content are now planning a trip to Ontario. There was a 298% increase in likeliness to search for Ontario, Canada. They overachieved Completed Video View benchmark rates by 32%.