Hawkes bay
•
2 likes•570 views
A copy of the presentation I gave to some very passionate tourism marketers in a beautiful little part of New Zealand.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Similar to Hawkes bay
Similar to Hawkes bay (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (15)
Hawkes bay
- 1. @rodneyp
- 3. Sydney | Vancouver |Amsterdam |Detroit
- 5. SQUAMISH, BC
- 7. Where do you live? Did you stay overnight? Did you visit to pre-ride? How many in your party? Estimate of spend?
- 8. ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY 2006 “$1.7 million”
- 10. KEY TAKE-AWAYS 1. Focus on people and stories. Look at the technology last.
- 14. To what extent do you trust TV/magazine/OOH advertising: 47% Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising and Brand Messages April 2012
- 22. Me Me 40 Likes & 40 Likes & comments comments
- 23. Me Me 6400 Friends of Friends 6400 Friends of Friends
- 24. Impact on travel and tourism 81% of travellers 83% of travellers said reviews were usually or always important when consult TripAdvisor deciding which reviews before hotel to stay at.* booking a hotel.** 75% of travellers 52% of Facebookers said their holiday was better because they said “that seeing used reviews to make friends’ holiday pictures sure they picked the had inspired them to best place for them.** book a holiday to the same place.*** * Forrester, 2011 ** Phocuswright, 2011 *** Skyscanner, 2011
- 25. Social Purchase Funnel ad to voc bu rs y t t the Awareness Awareness ot at he e no ll o rs o te Consideration Consideration do not Intent Intent repe repeat a t Book Book On Trip On Trip Repeat Repeat Recommend Recommend
- 26. To what extent do you trust recommendations from people you know: 92% Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising and Brand Messages April 2012
- 28. KEY TAKE-AWAYS 1. Focus on people and stories. Look at the technology last. 2. Communication has changed, forever.
- 37. KEY TAKE-AWAYS 1. Focus on people and stories. Look at the technology last. 2. Communication has changed, forever. 3. Listen first. Identify opportunities and embrace feedback.
- 44. KEY TAKE-AWAYS 1. Focus on people and stories. Look at the technology last. 2. Communication has changed, forever. 3. Listen first. Identify opportunities and embrace feedback. 4. Social media shines a spotlight on product and experience.
- 45. WORD OF MOUTH Passion Influencers Community
- 50. MILE ZERO – sign post
- 53. RVNorthernBC nerdnomad Dawson Creek is great. Laundry done (28 bucks!?!), dumped/refilled, got gas, and got WiFi at the information center. Now to find good food. 4:49 PM Aug 10th via web @RVNorthernBC I think I'm staying in Dawson Creek one more night to wrap up some work, so I'll try to catch it in the morning. 8:26 PM Aug 10th via web in reply to RVNorthernBC RT @nerdnomad: Work? Now that doesn't sound like a vacation! Keep us updated as you travel up the hwy and if you need any recommends pls ask 11:29 AM Aug 11th via TweetDeck • OK, so, Dawson Creek is not exactly vegetarian-friendly. The Chinese "smorg" at Dragon Palace was a sad affair; three (maybe) veggie items. 11:00 AM Aug 11th via web @nerdnomad In Ft St John try Whole Wheat & Honey or the Veggie Burger at Tim & Tyc's both have good veg dishes. Woodlands Inn in FtNelson. 11:54 AM Aug 11th via TweetDeck in reply to nerdnomad @nerdnomad Should mention that if you are back in DC try Cafe Euphoria or you can get a good Shanghai noodle dish at Mr Mikes. Bon appetit! August 11, 2010 12:09:52 PM PDT (CA) via TweetDeck in reply to nerdnomad
- 56. NICHES OVERLAP Bird Watching RV Touring Photography
- 57. Traditional Advertising Social & Digital Marketing
- 58. KEY TAKE-AWAYS 1. Focus on people and stories. Look at the technology last. 2. Communication has changed, forever. 3. Listen first. Identify opportunities and embrace feedback. 4. Social media shines a spotlight on product and experience. 5. Past travelers are one of your biggest opportunities.
- 59. Social at the core Amplified by PR and online outreach Supported by targeted and measurable digital Extended by traditional advertising
- 63. Unmapped
- 64. Unmapped Page Growth %: 86.9% from beginning of campaign
- 66. KEY TAKE-AWAYS 1. Focus on people and stories. Look at the technology last. 2. Communication has changed, forever. 3. Listen first. Identify opportunities and embrace feedback. 4. Social media shines a spotlight on product and experience. 5. Past travelers are one of your biggest opportunities. 6. Put social at the core of your marketing.
- 67. FLANDERS
- 71. “Get people talking about Dallas”
- 94. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say ‘thank-you’ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 95. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say ‘thank-you’ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 96. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say ‘thank-you’ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 97. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say ‘thank-you’ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 98. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say ‘thank-you’ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 99. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say ‘thank-you’ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 100. “This promotion/activity brought out the best in all of us. We approached total strangers without fear or judgment. We looked each other in the eye, spoke and smiled I just want to say ‘thank-you’ for such an absolutely fun and memorable experience.” -- Len Stanley
- 101. TOP-DOWN, BOTTOM-UP Destination Top Down: Bottom Up: This destination is This destination is a place where you the place to do can do these these things things niche niche niche niche niche niche
- 102. KEY TAKE-AWAYS 1. Focus on people and stories. Look at the technology last. 2. Communication has changed, forever. 3. Listen first. Identify opportunities and embrace feedback. 4. Social media shines a spotlight on product and experience. 5. Past travelers are one of your biggest opportunities. 6. Put social at the core of your marketing. 7. Start with one niche and focus on what you do best.
- 103. A DESTINATION THAT MARKETS ITSELF Research Product Marketing Delivery Research Recommendations Customer satisfaction Manage Extend Feedback Community Relationship
- 106. Framework Content, Tools, Analytics & Technology Content, Tools, Analytics & Technology
- 109. Level 2 rogue rogue experimentation experimentation
- 110. Level 3 Social Media supports Social Media supports our marketing our marketing campaigns campaigns
- 111. Level 4 Our social strategy is Our social strategy is fully integrated in our fully integrated in our marketing activities marketing activities
- 112. Level 5 Oh $@*&, our Oh $@*&, our whole business whole business just changed! just changed!
- 113. OUR SERVICES • Education DMO Education and Coaching • Products • Research Industry Education • Strategy Online Social Media • Implementation Training Manuals
- 114. OUR SERVICES • Education Facebook • Products Applications • Research Custom Social • Strategy Applications • Implementation Website Development
- 115. OUR SERVICES • Education Social Industry Analysis & • Products Benchmarking • Research Destination • Strategy Product Research • Implementation Social Media Audits
- 116. OUR SERVICES • Education Campaigns • Products Marketing Strategy • Research • Strategy Organizational Change • Implementation
- 117. OUR SERVICES • Education Community Management • Products Ad Management • Research • Strategy Campaign Implementation • Implementation
- 119. www.thinksocialmedia.com Rodney Payne @rodneyp
Editor's Notes
- Think! Social Media is a leading digital marketing agency with a laser-focus on the tourism industry and its roots in social media. Everyone who works at Think! has a Passion for travel.
- Think! Social Media is a leading digital marketing agency with a laser-focus on the tourism industry and its roots in social media. Everyone who works at Think! has a Passion for travel. We believe that the travel experience enhances peoples’ lives and that tourism makes the world a better place. By improving all stages of the tourism experience for consumers, we can help DMOs to achieve their goals and share their region with the world. We embrace the values of social media. Transparency and leading through openness are fundamental to our business. We believe that relationships are paramount and lead to trust.
- We’ve now grown a team close to 25 people spread across 4 offices, in key markets around the world.
- Squamish is a town in Canada, that you drive through on the way between Vancouver and Whistler. During the 90s, the logging industry that underpinned the town’s economy started to decline.
- Test of Metal is a very challenging mountain bike race in Squamish. The 800 positions sell out every year within an hour. In 2001, the event managers wanted to use the race to help the town’s economy through tourism. At that time, most of the racers were locals or from one hour away. Their hypothesis was that if you visited from further than 3-hours drive, you couldn’t race 67km without staying overnight. Serious mountain bikers would want to pre-ride the course at least once, and if some people may even bring a partner or their family.
- The event organisers were mountain bikers themselves. Although Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and all of the other networks we have today didn’t exist in 2001, there were discussion boards and forums where mountain bikers connected. They spent a few hours online in conversations with other mountain bikers who would have to drive more than 3 hours to race. At the event, everyone who registered filled out a short survey to determine whether there were more out of town entrants.
- The crude survey revealed that the proportion of overnight stays from entrants had increased from 5% to 20% in the first year of their online conversations. They calculated that this was worth over $1 million to the local economy. Years later in 2006, the Western Mountain Bike Association of Canada released a study that revealed that; “Squamish saw spending from riders totaling over $1.7 million as a result of non-resident riders visiting the trail system as well as training and participating in the popular Test of Metal mountain bike race held in mid June each year.”
- Social media isn’t about Facebook or Twitter, or Pinterest or Flickr. Its about communication. Human beings have evolved because of our extroadinary communication skills. More and more organisations are paying attention to social media because you can now clearly see these stories that we tell each other, online. Before the internet, the number of stories that people heard was more limited. DMOs created their own stories about the destination and worked with media so that they could tell new stories. Now every single traveler is a journalist.
- (rather than one-off campaigns.)
- Before the internet existed…
- The decision process that travellers go through is complex. Before the social web, it used to look like a funnel shape that many marketers will recognize. A wide audience would receive a message and there would be drop-off at every level of the funnel after that.
- Many businesses have not caught up with the consumer. Organizations are still spending most of their time on awareness and not enough time at the other levels of the process. Awareness is hard when there is so much competition.
- Consumers trust each other, especially for complicated purchase decisions. We leverage relationships with our friends, and people who are similar to us at every level of the funnel. There’s even a few studies that have come out recently that are evidence to a correlation between seeing content from friends on Facebook and purchasing travel.
- Consumers create their own awareness within their own networks and within niches. DMOs need to spend less resources on awareness and more time having conversations with and marketing to people lower in the funnel. The people who experience your destination are now the people doing your marketing for you.
- (rather than one-off campaigns.)
- If you’re not listening to online conversations, you could be missing out on a huge opportunity. In 2009, Jet Blue Airlines ran an special where you could travel as much as you wanted for a month. They sold 10,000 All You Can Jet passes (AYJC) and most of the travelers who used them connected through JFK airport overnight in New York.
- An online community formed for people using the AYJC pass on forums on Jet Blue’s website and on Twitter #AYJC. Many of these travelers didn’t get hotels in New York because their connections were only overnight. A savvy hotel in New York could have been full during one of their quietest months, if they had listened to and catered to these travelers.
- I sent out a tweet for advice before I came to Auckland for the eTourism Conference. It’s easy to monitor twitter for words like ‘Auckland’ or ‘New Zealand’ and ‘tips’ or ‘suggestions’. Nobody wrote back to me.
- explain the benefits of adding content to trip advisor, using facebook fan page to begin your own community: TripAdvisor has more traffic. There’s more chance of making people aware of your destination when they’re browsing for something else. (more chance than them stumbling on to your website).
- explain the benefits of adding content to trip advisor, using facebook fan page to begin your own community: TripAdvisor has more traffic. There’s more chance of making people aware of your destination when they’re browsing for something else. (more chance than them stumbling on to your website).
- The Seychelles Tourism Minister, understood the importance of feedback in his former role as CEO of the tourism board. Every Wednesday, he’d look at the tourism industry’s TripAdvisor reviews and personally call the people who’d dropped to see what was going on. If people expected a new hot tub, he’d help a business to improve their product or adjust their marketing to manage peoples’ expectations.
- (rather than one-off campaigns.)
- There’s a golf course in South Africa that has a 19 th hole. The tee is on top of a mountain and the only way up there is via helicopter. The green is shaped like Africa, and if you get a hole in one, they’ll hand you $1 million dollars. That’s a remarkable product.
- You don’t need to do much to be remarkable. Westjet have an amazing, employee-driven culture. This is a fundamental example a consumer-centric business. Westjet went above and beyond for a dying man. It didn’t cost much, but it did earn them unbelievable exposure. Over 250,000 people interacted with one person’s post on their fan page because they did something good. They focused on their product, not pushing a message through marketing. Westjet’s culture is very conducive for social media.
- Vulcan is a small town in Alberta that happens to share the same name as the planet from Star Trek. They’ve transformed their entire town into a Star Trek themed destination. The visitors’ centre is a space ship. There’s a scale replica of the Star Ship Enterprise. Even the city hall is now named the Interplanetary Headquarters. Each year they have a festival where thousands of Trekies gather. Its remarkable to people who like Star Trek.
- (rather than one-off campaigns.)
- At Think!, we use a series of concentric circles to understand communities that form around niches. Passion is very strong interest. It follows that the more passionate a community, the stronger the trust and frequency of word-of-mouth communication. Some people have more influence in a community than others. We call these people influencers. Someone’s influence is a factor of reach and level of trust or credibility. Its easy to think of influencers as being very close to the center of a community. Influencers can often drive the direction of the community at large.
- When I’m not sitting in front of a computer or talking to people about social media, I like to spend my time on the water, kiteboarding.
- Does anyone know what city hosts the largest marathon in USA? (NY) 2 ND ? (Chicago) 3 RD ? (Honolulu) 28,000 entrants. 17,000 from Japan. 70 Jumbo jets. The Test of Metal may appear to be an isolated example. It isn’t. The opportunities provided by Influencing people in target markets through their passion is unlimited. Hawai’i is traditionally associated with surfing, great beaches, friendly people and an amazing climate. In running circles its known for something else. Each year, the Honolulu Marathon attracts 28,000 participants. Of those, 17,000 fly in exclusively from Japan for the race. On average, each runner travels with one companion. If you do the math, the equivalent of 70 fully loaded 747 planes of Japanese tourists descend on Honolulu each year. The economic impact of the marathon in 2007 was estimated at $101 million . What makes Japanese marathon runners passionate about visiting Honolulu? This is one niche to identify, nurture and harness. The Honolulu Marathon began in 1973, long before the concept of social media arrived. What the event shows is how niche marketing opportunities can scale. Every destination has a niche or can create one. It doesn’t matter whether its mountain biking in Squamish, a marathon in Hawaii, or picking grapes for ice wine in the Okanagon, looking for the White Raven in Parksville, sampling lama jerky in the Caribou Chilcotin region, ice Climbing in Bella Coola, an accordion festival and or ski bum competitions in the Kootenay Rockies or reinventing the world’s best hike to challenge Vancouver Island’s West Coast Trail. This book is the result of research and discussions surrounding over 30 social media workshops conducted with organizations responsible for marketing tourism. Throughout this guide we will discuss examples of passionate niches, focused social marketing opportunities, small target audiences, clear goals, effective measurements and similar case studies and pilots that are scalable. If you move marketing focus beyond Facebook and Twitter, social communication tools provide you the opportunity to replicate efforts like Squamish Test of Metal in your destination. The rest of this book teaches you how you can do it yourself using the Think! Framework.
- The key to engagement is relevance. People have control over what they consume and they can filter out your broadcasting messages.
- A community can influence people in other communities, ie everybody else.
- Passionate communities overlap because of people who glue them together.
- Marketers now need to understand that there is no one-size-fits all message, and the traditional ‘niches’ that many destinations use are still too broad. Targeted campaigns are like using a rifle instead of a shotgun. Targeted campaigns allow for a conversation with your audience, rather than a one-way pitch.
- (rather than one-off campaigns.)
- Tourism boards are having to adapt their activities to the consumer. Tourism is highly experiential with unlimited combinations of experiences. Marketing a destination is very different to marketing large consumer brands. We believe that tourism marketing should be consumer-centric, with social at the core. Social is so important to destination marketing that we’ve built our entire destination marketing methodology around it.
- You can also be proactive about getting feedback from your community. #SoMeT is a conference in the USA where delegates choose the location through a voting process that attracts tens of thousands of votes each year. Community input is also sought into the speakers and event schedule in a less formal way. The whole event is a Petri-dish for how social media can be rooted at the core of business.
- Here’s a screenshot of the final voting round for 2012. El Paso CVB did a terrific job of rallying their fans, followers and the local community to get them across the line.
- Destination NSW’s #Unmapped campaign put social at the core of their youth marketing this year. The campaign produced content in a social way. Fans determined the trip and experiences for the 6 influencers on a bus. Fans could follow along while the participants produced content along the way.
- Along the way, individuals and travelers could communicate with the bus and tell them where to go and what to do. Media throughout the destination also caught on. The social buzz was amazing.
- The trip also produced content on niches. The depth of knowledge within niches is hard to get without a real subject matter expertise. To solve that problem, videos and blogs relayed stories told by influencers about why NSW was the best place to visit for that particular community.
- (rather than one-off campaigns.)
- Flanders, in Belgium ran a ground breaking niche campaign this year to highlight their festival scene. To support a very large social contest, the campaign invited 100 bloggers from around the world to experience festivals of their choice. Flanders’ brand was in their hands. You can see more here: http://www.facebook.com/flandersisafestival
- In 2010, Dallas CVB asked Think! to help with a campaign around the Superbowl. They wanted to highlight all of the new developments in the downtown core that had revitalized the destination. For detailed information on this campaign, please see: http://thinksocialmedia.com/2011/01/the-story-of-our-super-bowl-campaign-that-got-2-4-million-people-talking/
- Dallas was due to host the Superbowl and wanted to leverage this for exposure in social media.
- At Think!, we use a series of concentric circles to understand communities. Passion is very strong interest. It follows that the more passionate a community, the stronger the trust and frequency of word-of-mouth communication. Some people have more influence in a community than others. We call these people influencers. Someone’s influence is a factor of reach and level of trust or credibility. Its easy to think of influencers as being very close to the center of a community. Influencers can often drive the direction of the community at large.
- Football in America generates a lot of passion among supporters. The communities that we focused on were around the final two teams: Greenbay and Pittsburgh.
- A mystery man from Dallas visited both Greenbay and Pittsburgh in the week before the big game. If you could find the mystery man, and ask him a secret question, he would hand you two tickets to the event, travel costs and accomodation.
- You could only get the secret phrase by clicking ‘Like’ on Dallas CVB’s fan page. The phrase was ‘Have you been to Dallas lately’.
- We identified influencers in the form of sports bloggers in both Greenbay and Pittsburgh.
- We worked with local sports bloggers in the two cities to help get the word out within the communities.
- Through Twitter, clues were released regularly on how to find the mystery man in each city. Every clue related back to Dallas’ unique offerings as a destination.
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- Momentum building – twitter conversation
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- Momentum built online very quickly.
- As thousands of people were chasing the clues around in the two cities, the local press got involved quite quickly.
- The story quickly spread as people searched for the mystery man. http://www.wtae.com/r-video/26656301/detail.html
- The mystery man was found in both cities on the second day of the campaign.
- One of the winners was homeless. She didn’t own a cell phone or a computer. She’d heard other people running around asking the secret phrase and joined in. Messages spread because of the content, not the medium in which they began. People don’t really distinguish between online and offline.
- Mainstream media picked up the story.
- Many major outlets were talking about Dallas and the Mystery Man campaign.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- Many people actually thanked Dallas for bringing their community together. This is the opposite of advertising punching people in the face.
- As a result of the granularity of information available on the social web, destination marketing needs to change. It becomes bottom-up, rather than top down.
- (rather than one-off campaigns.)
- Be Remarkable. Unofficial world record salmon catch – Back Eddy Pub Best new creeking town in North America – Rapid Magazine
- We have noticed as a series of levels as destination marketers become increasingly sophisticated and more comfortable with digital marketing, with social at the core. For more information on the levels, see http://www.wilhelmus.ca/2012/04/5-levels-of-social-media-sophistication-at-the-dmo.html
- People start by ignoring social media.
- Social media is adopted in pockets of the organisation. Leadership likely don’t know about it.
- Social media becomes ‘tacked’ on to traditional advertising campaigns to support or push a message through one more channel. As a result, its often ineffective and people question its ROI. In our experience, this is where most destinations marketing organisations currently sit.
- Organisations at level 4 have realised the power of consumer-centric marketing and have created a comprehensive social media strategy.
- When you get to level 4, you’ll actually realise that it’s not an evolution at all. Your entire business model needs to change to be more effective.
- Our services cover 5 key areas; Education, web products, research, strategy and implementation We have worked with DMOs all over North America to help them understand the changes presented by social media and how best their organization can capitalize on the opportunity We have worked with dmos to educate their stakeholders and directly with tourism businesses We are producing the Online marketing guide to be included in their Tourism Essentials. We want to do the same thing for Tourism Australia’s e-kit and are our involvement is being championed to the committee by Diana Kahui.
- We build applications that help tourists to share their experiences with their friends. We have many and are building more. Places, Things to Do, Postcards, Souvenirs. They all focus on consumers sharing content rather than DMOs broadcasting. Talk about CMS. (don’t worry about web dev unless they ask)
- We use social media to further traditional market research. We can examine traditional target markets and also identify opportunities to enhance existing tourism products. One of our more popular products is an audit of existing social media efforts. Many of the DMO activities in social media that we have seen tend to be organic and we can bring a strategic perspective. Example: montreal - we're doing a 20 week project on organizational change. the travel consumer has changed, the dmo needs to adapt. Target Market Research Destination product research Social Media Audits
- One of our strengths is social media strategy. This can range from organizational-wide strategic change to supporting marketing campaigns. For Tourisme Montreal, we are embarking on a large project to assess how their organizational structure must adapt for the emergence of the social web. This is a large project that we are very proud to have been charged with. There is a lot of learning here that can be applied to other DMOs. We also look at social media beyond tourism marketing. There is a PR role that cannot be overlooked. For the Calgary Stampede, we have developed an organization-wide crisis management plan. It is essential that DMOs prepare for attacks in social media. stampede - if we can build a crisis plan for them, we're arguably the best placed firm to help TA. TA needs it, just look at the recent direct attack. Special interest groups will be doing this more and more
- Our team is highly skilled at implementation. We manage online communities, run social advertising to support marketing efforts and we manage campaigns.
- Our most recent office is located in Sydney, where we will help DMOs and the tourism industry in the Asia Pacific region to innovate on a world stage.
- Please keep in touch.
- Give people a reason to follow you. Can use images like this for “Postcards” Go to south dakota page or Stampede.
- Knut, Berlin Zoo, Orphan
- (rather than one-off campaigns.)
- In any city, there’s lots of professional and amateur photographers. They’re already taking photos, many of your destination. They already have their own social networks and audiences, their own websites and web traffic. So, why not put them all on a bus? Better yet, why not have them compete to get on the bus. How? With a photo competition of course. That’s what Los Angeles CVB did. http://blog.discoverlosangeles.com/?page_id=2 On Feb. 28, 2010, LA INC. The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau launched its inaugural LA Cultural Photo Tour. Born from LA INC.’s “Photo of the Day” blog that was started in October 2009, a group of 25 “Photo of the Day” winners were hosted by LA INC. on a double-decker bus tour of Los Angeles; stopping at several cultural institutions from Hollywood to Downtown to the Westside. The tour was sponsored by Starline Tours and coincided with LA INC.’s Discover the Arts in Los Angeles program (offering the public up to 50% savings at cultural institutions around the county). On Feb. 28, 2010, LA INC. The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau launched its inaugural LA Cultural Photo Tour. Born from LA INC.’s “Photo of the Day” blog that was started in October 2009, a group of 25 “Photo of the Day” winners were hosted by LA INC. on a double-decker bus tour of Los Angeles; stopping at several cultural institutions from Hollywood to Downtown to the Westside. The tour was sponsored by Starline Tours and coincided with LA INC.’s Discover the Arts in Los Angeles program (offering the public up to 50% savings at cultural institutions around the county). Since the “Photo of the Day” blog launched, LA INC. has shared iconic LA images daily with its Facebook fans(240,000+ fans) and Twitter followers(7,500+ followers). The images are submitted by users on LA INC.’s Flickr account (750+ members have shared more than 15,000+ photos of Los Angeles).