Marketing organization Travel Drumheller is readying plans to invite the local hotel and tourism industries to voluntarily participate in a marketing fund which would be used to promote and market tourism in Drumheller to a wider audience.
A draft document of a destination marketing fund agreement has been crafted by the organization and is waiting for board approval. This proposal would ask hotels and other businesses to contribute towards the marketing fund by earmarking a small percentage of revenue such as room bookings to be given in trust to Travel Drumheller. This destination marketing fund would then be used to garner marketing and social media promotion of Drumheller to help diversify the town’s tourism market and promote less know attractions in Drumheller.
Town economic development officer and Travel Drumheller board member Julia Fielding said Drumheller is a steady attraction for certain demographics but can be marketed to garner the attention of a variety of others.
“You’ve got to think about what markets we want to push. We do well with families in Drumheller, but if we wanted younger travellers, you choose to hire bloggers who’s readers are the ones you wish to attract,” said Fielding.
Bloggers, YouTubers, and travel magazines have featured Drumheller in the past and Travel Drumheller would like to increase this exposure. Just last month the Gran Fondo event was featured in Calgary’s Avenue magazine and created some buzz on social media.
Canalta Hotels, a significant stakeholder in Drumheller’s hotel industry, is already on board with the marketing fund program, and Fielding said a number of other hotels in the valley have expressed interest in participating. Participating businesses would have input on where the marketing dollars are spent and on the audience they wish to attract.
Dan Sullivan, Travel Drumheller board member and Canalta destination development director, said Canalta has collected this fund for the past eight years across Alberta and Saskatchewan and says it’s worked.
“Any jurisdiction whose had this program in place has never cancelled the program which shows it does work,” said Sullivan.
“We want to level the playing field with communities who do have this in place and compete with them to put Drumheller on the map in terms of a destination.”
“We want to sell the Drumheller experience,” said Fielding. “Of course there’s the Tyrrell and dinosaurs, but we also have this landscape and canyons, saloons – all of these fun and quirky, great things we have in our family. The goal is to widen and increase knowledge about the valley.”
Travel Drumheller has based their program design from a similar model in use by Banff’s tourism organization.
Travel Drumheller was allocated $40,000 from Drumheller Town Council earlier this year to create a sustainable funding model so the organization can clear money in order to run marketing campaigns to drive more visitors to Drumheller.
“We’re all quite aware in Drumheller that we’re busy in July and August, but Travel Drumheller wants to widen the season and use the money from the destination marketing fund to do that,” said Fielding.
Travel Drumheller also wishes to increase visitation to their website, traveldrumheller.com, which has events and visitor information local businesses can take advantage of.
