‘It’s Good To Expand Your Horizons’
~ Words by Vickie Sam Paget, Sky Blue Content ~
America Yours To Discover talks to Christopher L Thompson, president & CEO at Brand USA, about the importance of the Canadian market, the organization’s new travel agent training program and how your clients can expand their horizons in the United States…
Tell us about Brand USA…
“Our overall vision is to grow international visitation and spend in the United States, as well as increase our share of the global travel market. We have around 400 partners that represent the destinations, both at the city and the state level. We also have 12 offices around the world and we’re active in more than 30 different markets that represent around 90 per cent of inbound travel to the United States.
“Our Land of Dreams brand campaign is now active in 10 of those 30 markets. The campaign invites the world to ‘discover this land like never before’. We’re excited about it; it served us well at the initial launch and it still has the ability to influence intent to travel.”
How can Brand USA help Canadian travel agents?
“Most of our contact with the Canadian travel trade right now is through the airlines and the tour operators, but we’re planning to launch a training program that we’ve piloted in the UK. It’s an online platform called the USA Discovery Program and it allows members of the travel trade to become experts in all that is the United States of America as a travel destination.
“They can choose to do that geographically or they can do it by experiences – there are lots of different filters. And when they become experts, they get a designation, or travel expert badges, that they can use in the signature-close to their emails.
“We plan on rolling out this program in Canada by the end of this year.”
How important is the Canadian market to Brand USA?
“Canada continues to be our number one international market. For the fourth straight year we have had record visitation. For 2013 Canadian visitation was just over 23 million – that was up three per cent year over year. It’s projected to grow by another two per cent in 2014 year over year.”
Do you see any changes in market trends from Canada?
“It’s relatively consistent and pretty predictable. In eastern Canada they have an affinity for the eastern seaboard. On the west coast obviously there is an affinity for destinations in the western United States.
“As we continue to look at expanded air services – they will provide opportunities for Canadians to discover experiences that they may not know about. Moving forward, that will be the trend that allows us to expand interest and bring in more visitors.”
What challenges are you facing with the Canadian market?
“Canada is very familiar with the United States and it is our largest market. Many Canadians travel to the United States year-in and year-out, so I think our challenge is to help Canadians, as our Land of Dreams campaign says: Discover this land like never before.
Canadians are certainly familiar with the cities and states that they’ve travelled to for decades, so our challenge is to keep them interested in coming, but also help them realize that there is a lot to the United States they haven’t experienced. Our charge is to promote to, through and beyond the gateways.”
Can you give us some examples of destinations Canadians may not be familiar with?
“Pick any number of them! Pick any of the eastern states that are on the way to – let’s say Florida – or in and around New York or Boston or any of the metropolitan areas that would be considered major gateways. That applies for the west coast too.
“In no way are we suggesting that they shouldn’t continue to go to those destinations, but in the instance where we might be losing the visitor to destinations outside the United States, then we would suggest that there are tremendous experiences between the gateway cities and states that the traveller is used to.
“It’s good to expand your horizons and what you’re willing to discover. We as U.S. citizens are also guilty of that. We tend to be comfortable with the places we’ve always been to and in some cases we have not expanded our own wings to go out and discover the parts of the country that we haven’t seen. We share that same challenge to try to expand our horizons.”
Do you have any tips for agents?
“Understand the client’s interest and what motivates them to travel and then put them in the hands of our destinations, whether that is the cities, the states or the brands that represent the products and experiences.
“Some of our Canadian visitors might be suggesting: Well I’ve been to the United States so many times, I’m very familiar with it, so I might consider another destination. In that case, we would invite them to ‘re-discover’ this land like never before. Our job is to convince them that there are things that they may not even know about – so they should consider another visit to the United States.
“As an overriding theme, that is what we encourage the travel trade to do, and then they can engage with us through the training program and the other resources we bring to the table, to help them to tell their stories and sell those packages in ways that maybe haven’t been told or sold before.”
What do you love about the U.S. travel product?
“If you look at what the United States has to offer from coast to coast, there are just so many things to see and do in this country. That’s what I’m excited about: getting a greater appreciation for that diversity.”
Image: Brand USA
This feature first appeared in America Yours to Discover, an annual publication for Canadian travel agents that’s created in collaboration with Discover America-Canada.
