“We’re from British Columbia,” Devin Pielle tells a stranger who has approached her in Kowloon, near the Star Ferry terminal where boats make 15-minute jaunts to Hong Kong Island.
She learns that she has met a fellow British Columbian and reveals that her hometown is Powell River.
Pielle was part of a delegation from the Tla’amin Nation that was in the Chinese special administrative region of Hong Kong in April to deliver a totem pole to the Wah Yan College Kowloon Boys’ Choir.
The trip was also a way to raise awareness of the Powell River International Choral Kathaumixw community festival.
The Kowloon-based boys’ choir had visited Powell River in 2016 and won that Sunshine Coast community’s globally renowned biennial choir competition.
Having representatives of the competition visit the winner’s hometown and personally deliver a freshly carved, nine-foot-tall totem pole is one of the ways that the 33-year-old choir competition has become known around the world.
The delegation’s presence on a busy promenade along the Kowloon waterfront also acted as subtle encouragement for onlookers to visit B.C. and learn about aboriginal culture.
A crowd gathered around Pielle and fellow Tla’amin member Gary Gonzales as they drummed and sang on a hot and humid morning.
“We have a celebration prepared for this afternoon,” said Paul Cummings, who was the festival’s artistic director in 2016. “We’ve got the Canadian consul general in attendance and dignitaries from Hong Kong and the Wah Yan College. There will be a whole ceremony of passing the totem pole and it will include a community elder.”
The Powell River contingent is only one group in B.C. that has decided to market its event by getting out of its hometown.
Comox’s B.C. Shellfish and Seafood Festival held a pre-launch event March 15 at the Vancouver Fish Company Restaurant and Bar to raise awareness for its June 9-18 extravaganza.
Restaurateurs are also thinking innovatively.
Whistler’s Bearfoot Bistro partnered with Vancouver’s Market By Jean-Georges in late 2013. Staff at each restaurant packed up the furniture and moved into the other restaurant. The restaurants’ kitchen teams then took over the other restaurant’s kitchen and served their food to guests at a one-night-only function.
More recently, the Clayoquot Wilderness Resort devoted marketing dollars to moving one of its 25 luxury tents from its remote location – 35 minutes by boat from Tofino – to Vancouver’s Rosewood Hotel Georgia. Representatives of the resort set up the luxury tent in one of the heritage hotel’s ballrooms complete with high-end furniture, a flat-screen TV and other deluxe fixings.
(Image: Clayoquot Wilderness Resort vice-president of development Laura Neubert (foreground) sits in a tent that has been set up in a Rosewood Hotel Georgia ballroom while the hotel’s managing director, Philip Meyer, looks on | Chung Chow)
The two-day pop-up event launched on May 2, the day before international luxury-travel advisory company Virtuoso held a symposium in Vancouver.
Clayoquot Wilderness Resort and the Hotel Georgia co-sponsored a dinner for Matthew Upchurch, CEO of Virtuoso, and more than 80 of his company’s top travel advisers.
Dinner tables surrounded the luxury tent and gave the advisers a clear idea of what a luxury camping experience would be like.
“The dinner last night was our prime objective as we wanted to show appreciation to the Virtuoso advisers, to co-host a nice dinner and to introduce the idea of our resort,” Clayoquot Wilderness Resort vice-president of development Laura Neubert told Business in Vancouver over coffee inside the tent.
“When people think about going to a wilderness eco-safari in Canada, in a biosphere reserve, they think of many complications,” Neubert said.
“‘How do I get there? Is it safe? Is the float plane big or is it small?’ So we’ve partnered with the hotel so that our guests have a seamless transition to the resort.”
Packages for the guests usually include a stay at the Hotel Georgia, a float plane ride to the resort and other perks such as wine and massages.
“There is little that you would have to pay extra for other than maybe a helicopter adventure,” Neubert said.•
