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. How's tourism in Toronto doing? Depends on who you ask: the Globe says it's not going so hot across the board for the big......

If Reba McEntire and Tony Bennett come to Toronto to play, why shouldn't tourists follow suit? Two decades ago, Metro Toronto urged tourists to "discover the feeling" while sampling its neighbourhoods and attractions. The focus of the late 1980s television spot that we've dug up today is the multitude of leisure activities the city offers. Viewers in markets like Cleveland and Detroit were enticed to check out ballet, fishing, gondola rides, horse racing, boutique......

Impending implosion of both economy and environment notwithstanding, tourists are still flocking to Toronto. Toronto Tourism reports that 2008 is shaping up to be another record year for visitors to the town also called Hollywood North, New York Run By The Swiss, Montreal Without The Culture, Seriousville, and the City Most Likely To Be Praised By American Celebrities. TTC fuel costs are set to jump next year when a contract guaranteeing fuel at 87¢/litre......

Photo of Amsterdam's Red Light District by Stuck in Customs. With all this talk about promoting tourism, all kinds of ideas have been proposed, from improving our toilets to depicting the city as a tattoo. These suggestions are a good start, but it is also important to look at one of the biggest attractions that brings people to cities: entertainment. With all the focus on making Toronto better, maybe some of our efforts ought......

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......

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......

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. What did we do to incur the wrath of......

Say, who's that dude with the pitchfork selecting the next queen of Toronto's tourism industry? Hmmm, could it be...SATAN?!!! It seems that a Toronto woman was invited to judge a local beauty pageant, only to have the invite retracted because some of her hobbies were deemed a little too demonistic. Stephanie Conover, an actor, singer, dancer, and current Miss Canada Plus 2007, was asked about three weeks ago if she would be interested in judging......

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. Since Rogers Communications announced plans to acquire Citytv, there has been much speculation about what would happen to the legendary Queen Street studios. The solution became the former Olympic Spirit complex at the south-east corner of Dundas Square. Built for $42 million in 2004, the building......

With Citytv moving out of 299 Queen West as part of the Rogers-CTVglobemedia deal, some alarm was raised over the fate of the CityPulse truck—long a fixture of Queen and John. Too complicated to dismantle and acknowledged as a downtown tourist landmark, it was announced that the famous artwork (or eyesore, depending on who you're talking to) would stay put. Now that the two entities are to be officially severed and City News is......

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. But it seems like the appointment of David Whitaker as Tourism Toronto's president back in March injected a little spirit into the agency. Earlier this week, they announced a new campaign targeting gay tourists from the States. The tagline? Toronto: As Gay......

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. The revulsion with which Torontonians responded to last week's sudden advertising invasion got us wondering: If that's how the public reacted to forty street-level ad structures in place for two days, how will people feel about the one hundred twenty new "info pillars" that will be in place for......

Just like Will Smith circa 1998, Tourism Toronto is going to Miami. In the latest in a series of weird decisions (like that weird-looking Toronto Unlimited logo or that utterly crappy "Live With Culture" ad campaign), the organization has hired David Whitaker as their President. The Financial Post reports that Whitaker, an American citizen, has been working for the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau since the early 90s, and is currently the Bureau's Executive......

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. But Andrew Weir, vice-president of Tourism Toronto, said his agency finds external......

Do either of these ads say "Toronto" to you? Captions: at left, "Do you think I need a breast reduction?", at right: "Tonight I'm not Susan. Call me Antoinette." They're the city's new "T.O. Live With Culture" ads. Made from leftover money from the Live With Culture budget, they are supposed to target American tourists: according to CTV, "the ads are destined for alternative weekly newspapers in eight U.S. border cities. Readers in Buffalo, Rochester,......

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. Part of the appeal Google Earth holds is "flying" through three-dimensional terrain as if in a 90s-era flight simulator, and Google wants to map bridges, skyscrapers, and landmarks as well. Television news networks have relied on the paid, enhanced version Google......

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. A company that runs duty free stores is going to ask for compensation for sales lost because of strict security. The McGuinty government is going......

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. The piece talks about the ROM, the AGO and other major construction projects. But its focus happens to be those singing, dancing, Mirvish produced Hobbits! The headline reads "A Revitalized Toronto Pins Its Hopes on the Hobbits." We're going to......

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......

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......

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 fact that it piqued the curiousity of foreign journalists is a step in the right direction. And as......

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). Torontoist, along with just about every other media commentator in this city has whined about......

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......

Slow news weeks mean the press has to synthesize, to take the story of the day and make it new by microwaving it, adding some special sauce and informing the dining public why we should eat the same meal for the third day in the row. And so, in this week of drizzle and fizzle, it should come as no surprise that gay marriage is being reheated like a Morrison's Cafeteria Special. CP talks about......