Capilano Suspension Bridge Park's (CSBP) $4.6 million investment in its new Cliffwalk walkways, along with hundreds of thousands of dollars more for an aggressive marketing campaign, helped the nature park attract a 21% rise in visitors.
The moves also helped CSBP win a major marketing award while simultaneously providing a lesson for owners of other tourist destinations: keep investing in innovating.
The B.C. chapter of the American Marketing Association (BCAMA) on September 4 named the CSBP as its 2012 marketer of the year. CSBP developed a campaign that included:
•advertising material developed by Spring Advertising;
•targeted media relations from Hill and Knowlton;
•sales promotions;
•online marketing and social media;
•radio advertising; and
•billboards on buses.
Key to the successful campaign, however, was to provoke excitement over Cliffwalk by inviting media to cover its construction. The CSBP even generated free promotion by being featured on the Daily Planet science show on the Discovery Channel.
"We made people aware of Cliffwalk before it was actually built," CSBP vice-president of sales and marketing Sue Kaffka told Business in Vancouver. "After that build-up, there was a clear understanding of what was opening. That helped create excitement once the Cliffwalk was open."
This wasn't the first time that CSBP, which had approximately 700,000 visitors in the year that ended in June, has invested heavily in a new attraction that generated a spike in visitors.
It spent about $2 million in 2004 to build what it calls its "treetops adventure" and then had a similar jump in interest from visitors.
"It's very hard to tell local residents that we're more than a bridge," Kaffka said. "But, when we open something new, like a treetops adventure or the Cliffwalk, locals are curious and they come to see us and then realize how much we've changed from when they were kids."
The CSBP is not the only well-known local destination to invest heavily in major new attractions as a business strategy to pump up visitor counts.
Science World at Telus World of Science is in the final stages of its $35 million regeneration project, and the Vancouver Aquarium is proceeding into a three-phase project that will cost approximately $85 million and will take place over eight years.
Grouse Mountain owner Stuart McLaughlin has made an art form out of adding attractions, diversifying his resort and making his mountain an all-season hub for adventure.
That diversification has driven visitor counts to approximately 1.25 million last year.
"Our success has come from innovation," said McLaughlin, whose late father, Bruce McLaughlin, bought the mountain in the 1980s.
The Eye of the Wind turbine, on which McLaughlin spent several million dollars to build in time for the 2010 Olympics, is the most recent in a string of initiatives aimed at luring visitors.
Diversification started in the late 1980s when McLaughlin launched the Theatre in the Sky, which mimicked General Motors' popular Spirit Lodge pavilion at Vancouver's 1986 world's fair.
McLaughlin also invested in a tramway, a nature reserve and conservation centre and five ziplines, which arrived in 2008.
