Sunshine Matters

While the media and financial analysts debate the weakened Canadian dollar and signs of it strengthening, VISIT FLORIDA partnered with Vacay.ca, an online publisher focused on travel stories for Canadians.  Working with the publisher and its editorial team, VISIT FLORIDA and our Industry Partners organized press trips for three journalists from Vacay.ca during the spring.

The research trips reported on diverse Florida travel experiences – ranging from culinary hotspots to art and culture, romantic trips at Florida attractions, discovering new hotels in familiar destinations, road trips along exotic Florida highways, reminders of why Florida is the golf capital of the world, sports and adventures in the Sunshine State, exploring our Everglades National Park, and much more.

All-in-all, 31 stories were produced for a dedicated landing page, Vacay.ca’s Flock to Florida.  Highlights include:

• Kennedy Space Center a launchpad for dreams
• Weekend in Delray Beach for Florida sun and fun
• Dali Museum takes you on a walk on the wild side
• Five reasons why Pigeon Key’s five acres is worth seeing
• 10 places to get away from it all in Florida
• Grouper is king at Frenchy’s Grill in Clearwater Beach, Florida

Florida.Vacay.ca’s audience includes Canadians who are highly motivated to travel and whose intent to travel is influenced by credible content.  The top markets reached are Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver.

The Florida content will remain live beginning July 1 through December 31, 2016.  As of August 15, the content performance was strong, with 92,400 UVMs, more than 283,000 page views and an average time of 3 minutes spent on the site.

The project with Vacay.ca also leveraged their social media channels, including Twitter and Facebook, with each published Florida story being shared with their followers.

In addition, 4 content pieces were published on DailyHive.com, a high-traffic website with a large following among millennials.  Daily Hive has more than 5.5 million unique visitors per month.

The initiative shows that Canadians continue to have a healthy appetite for Florida travel-related content.  Continued engagement will be important across multiple media channels in order to sustain Canada’s position as Florida’s number one market.  One of the upcoming PR opportunities includes a Canada Media Mission in October 2016.  To learn more, email me at kmorgan@VISITFLORIDA.org.