A successful #myMHsummer campaign says tourism

The campaign started on June 30 and included suggested Instagram locations and landmarks around the city.

As well as a trail challenge to draw attention to the 115 kilometres of pathways.

Anderson says the online summer campaign ended up having a reach of over 100,000 people on their social platforms.

“And that breaks out into probably about 30,000 Hatters give or take that we saw again and again over the life of the campaign. But the impressions were over 800,000. So not to nerd out over numbers, but what it means is that people were paying attention, and they were engaging. And so our website for example generally sees about 35-40 percent of its visitation from our locals.”

Anderson adds Medicine Hat tourism gets a strong market presence from visiting friends and relatives.

Those visits see about 40 percent of traffic, and during the summer campaign, local traffic was up over 60 percent.

Anderson says, it was a good summer, but not the same summer volume-wise that we would have seen last year.

The #myMHsummer campaign wrapped up on September 22.

He says the significant increase online and the responses given to stakeholders was also really encouraging. “That among the trepidation of COVID or the economy, or a completely foreign summer to what we’ve done before, we saw traffic and we’re better for it.”

As for the visitor information centre along the Trans Canada Highway, travellers from all over Canada stopped by, but numbers are a little bit down given border closures.

“It’s not the same American drive traffic we would generally see.”

Anderson adds from the minute they reopened the visitor information centre after the COVID shutdown, they saw people on a regular basis.

To reduce physical contact, tourism created prepackaged travel bags with magazines, brochures, and maps.

Bags were categorized for the southwest corner of the province, the Rockies, Saskatchewan, and Medicine Hat.

The bags were available outside the visitor information centre, Anderson adds they expect to do that in future years because the response was really positive.

To draw more attention to the local market, Tourism Medicine Hat also focused on community engagement with groups like the Miywasin society, Invest Medicine Hat, and the city to integrate groups in the summer campaign.

Anderson adds they are taking what they’ve learned and replicating that in the Calgary and exterior markets as well.

by Chantal Wagner

A successful #myMHsummer campaign says tourism

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