Results tagged “tourism”

Last year, we featured the television spots used during the latter half of the 1980s to encourage tourists to come to Toronto and "Discover the Feeling!" Today’s ad is an early print version of the campaign used to lure travellers from Motown into driving east on Highway 401. After a year of development by Camp Associates, the new tourism slogan was unveiled in 1984 as a replacement for "Toronto...Affectionately Yours," which had been used since 1972. Early reaction to the new slogan was summed up by Star columnist George Gamester: "’Discover the Feeling!’ doesn't sound like much for $50,000. But then 'I Love New York' probably didn't sound earth-shattering when first proposed, either."

Hamilton gets a bad rap, much of it based on the only view of the city most Torontonians get: overlooking the steel factories from the Skyway Bridge. While Toronto sometimes bills itself as a "City Within a Park," the moniker is actually more apt to our Steeltown neighbour to the west, which repeatedly kicks Toronto's ass when looking for ways to get back to nature. Seriously.

With spring heading into its full stride, visitors who aren't afraid of the latest pandemic are starting to make their way to our fair city. This tourism pitch from the provincial government spotlights several all-season wonders of indoor Toronto, including the magnificent enclosed space that is the skating rink at Nathan Phillips Square. Several of the featured locales had been open for less than a decade when this ad appeared—how many locations can you identify?

Dana White wants a piece of Toronto. During a press conference last Thursday, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president hinted his roster of strapping young scrappers might throw down in Hogtown by the end of the year. After revealing his plans to bring the UFC to New York in January, he remarked, “I’m hoping we have Toronto done before New York.”

Looking north from the top of the Bank of Commerce Building, 1957. City of Toronto Archives, fonds 1567, series 648, file 7.

Photo by Jonathan Goldsbie.

Toronto is the second most expensive city in North America and fifty-fourth most expensive city in the world, according to the Mercer's annual cost of living survey. In the worldwide list, Toronto jumped twenty-eight spots and now ranks as more expensive than Los Angeles, a city known for its frugality.

If Reba McEntire and Tony Bennett come to Toronto to play, why shouldn't tourists follow suit?

Photo of Amsterdam's Red Light District by Stuck in Customs.

If you happen upon a group of tourists decked out in Chicago Bears regalia (with or without helmets) on your daily commute to work in the next few days, we think we may know the reason why. The Chicago Tribune recently informed its readers that a visit to Toronto would be well worth their while. The author of the article—who claims to have visited Toronto 137 times—recommends "10 Things To Love" about Toronto; let's see how your list compares.

Have you ever cycled along the Pickering and Ajax waterfronts? You should. It's one of the best recreational bike rides in the GTA with beautiful scenery and mostly-flat trails, but presents Toronto cyclists with a big problem: how to get there. Because the Waterfront Trail all but disappears through most of Scarborough, you're stuck with either riding the long, miserable route along Kingston Road and Lawrence Avenue to get to Pickering or driving your car to Rouge Beach and riding into Pickering from there.

We hate to burst your bubble, but there's a good chance that the government of Australia hates Canada and all Canadians...especially you. This is, of course, nothing more than a wildly inappropriate and unverifiable allegation on our part, but we do have a bit of evidence to support our theory. You see, Australia's official position on Canada is that we're a dangerous country to visit.

Say, who's that dude with the pitchfork selecting the next queen of Toronto's tourism industry? Hmmm, could it be...SATAN?!!!

After decades of being situated as an icon of Queen Street West, it has been revealed that Citytv will be moving to a new high-profile location: Dundas Square.

Torontoist has had a long history of critiquing Tourism Toronto's lackluster ad campaigns. Remember Toronto Unlimited? We had a field day with that one. And those awful Live With Culture ads? Yuck.

The Toronto Public Space Committee last night Art Attacked every single Astral pillar in the city. Photos are here and here, with more to come.

Just like Will Smith circa 1998, Tourism Toronto is going to Miami.

Yesterday's Star had an interesting article that shed some light on the inner workings of Tourism Toronto, now famous for its embarrassing (and perhaps plagiarized) Toronto Unlimited campaign. Especially of interest to us was the contrast between New York's and Toronto's approaches to attracting visitors with external offices:

NYC & Company spokesperson Chris Heywood said the Toronto office will mainly promote leisure travel.

Continue reading "Marketing Toronto: Work vs. Play"

Do either of these ads say "Toronto" to you?

Yesterday marked the official release of Google Earth 4 (the public beta has been available since the summer), a free product with a cleaner interface and a beefed-up focus on 3-D architectural imagery.

Tourism Toronto is ecstatic at the success of the AIDS conference. The 25,000 delegates will be injecting forty million dollars into the local economy. Organizers have also noticed that most delegates have given the city very positive reviews. Sadly, many more couldn't attend the conference because of visa problems.

An observant reader let us know that The New York Times Travel section has a piece on Toronto's revitalization as a travel destination, which means somebody at Tourism Toronto has been doing their job.

A couple of weeks back we posted on Tourism Australia's new "risque" ad-campaign. Well apparently the CBC is a bit skittish about running the ad during "family programming" because of the word "hell." Uhm, have you been down to the schoolyard lately? The kids are using words much much worse than hell. Besides the Aussies need all of our love and support right now after being hit with the worst cyclone in a century. If anyone wants to send Torontoist down as a goodwill ambassador we'd totally volunteer.

Tourism and hospitality can be a tough business in this city. The SARS crisis thankfully never exploded into a full blown public outbreak but scared away enough visitors to the city that it might as well have been. Tourism Toronto, an agency controlled by tourism stakeholders like hotels, has been lacklustre in its marketing efforts. It seems that for every Lord of the Rings musical we're getting a Toronto Unlimited, a pretty poor track record considering it's these very same hotel owners that know just how bad business has been lately.

Observant readers of the Urban Toronto forum pointed out this Aussie ad campaign that asks tourists "Where the bloody hell are you?" We're not sure how the "strong language" will translate in China, Japan, India and Europe where these ads will be translated but in the English speaking world the reception seem to be quite positive.

The spectre of Tourism Toronto's bungled Toronto Unlimited Campaign reared its ugly head again today. The city can't seem to make up its mind on just what its brand identity should be and has added "InfoTOgo" as yet another registered trademark. The slogan can be seen on info pillars located around the city (like this one here outside Queen's Park).

Or tourism funding anyway. The red sharpies are flying over at City Hall, in a last ditch effort to strike-thru to fiscal solvency. On the chopping block is city funding for Toronto Tourism, which is being downgraded from $4.2 mil to $500K, despite the protestations of a certain Mayor of the Coif. The Coif says relations with the organization will be harmed by such a financial fallback, but TT is estimated to have a budget of $27 mil this year, so TOist will not be losing any sleep over friendship bracelets cut.

Whatever the cause, money in city coffers should please everyone. Fag hagglers, however opportunistic, can hardly be more reprehensible than bureaucracy bilkers.