EXECUTE A SALES MISSION CATERED TO DIFFERENT PARTNERS WITH VARYING AGENDAS
Brief:
Elevate the QuébecOriginal brand profile and destination as well as support the regional and product partners in developing their products in the UK market and training UK based agents.
Action:
Hills Balfour organised a three day sales mission with both trade and PR elements for QuébecOriginal and seven regional partner representatives. Each representative had a different mission owing to the uniqueness of their own regions and whether their main goal was to invigorate product development within the UK tour operator offerings or train the UK agents about their already existing offers.
To hit all the targets and support the partner’s initiatives, Hills Balfour created and organised seven unique events that would ensure the greatest ROI for the partners, cater for everyone’s needs and maximise their time whilst in the UK.
These included;
- Product Forum: Eight Product Managers from some of the biggest tour operators selling Canada were invited to a product forum where they had a 10 minute slot with the partners to discuss product development and marketing activities.
- Product Manager Cocktails: Hosted an evening of cocktails and food at The Refinery in Southwark to provide a more relaxed environment to network.
- “Street Art” Media event: Organised an interactive and fun event with the Product Managers and key London based journalists, whereby they all took to the spray cans and created their own version of the QuébecOriginal logo.
- VIP Quebecois cooking class: Hosted a training session at Atelier des Chefs in St Paul’s where partners and exclusive VIP agents from the Canadian Specialist Programme and Travel Counsellors were invited to join in a cooking lesson, revolving around Quebecois dishes and gastronomy.
- Webinar recording: Partnered with Destination Canada to record individual webinars for all partners on the Canadian Specialist Programme website. Each partner had 15 – 20 minute slots to talk about their offerings and products within their region, as well as share their contact details for agents watching.
- TTG Facebook Live: Partnered with the number one trade publication in the UK and Irish market, TTG and QuébecOriginal organised a Facebook Live to promote the regions to their wider social network of agents as well as offering the opportunity to enter a competition to win a pair of Air Canada flights, kindly gifted by Air Canada. Each partner spoke about the highlights of their region and relevant news.
- QuébecOriginal London Agent Evening: Inviting agents within the London area from key Tour Operators, QuébecOriginal hosted an interactive evening where agents got to meet and talk to the partners to get trained on the Québécois offerings whilst indulging in typically Québécois food such as poutine, lobster rolls and maple delicacies. A quiz was also hosted at the end with the two winners taking away a trip to Québec sponsored by the Québécois partners and the airline sponsors, British Airways and Air Transat.
Results to date:
The TTG Facebook Live has enjoyed over 3,000 views and over 60 engagements on the TTG Facebook page.
Over 70 agents trained physically and unrecorded number of agents trained on the CSP website.
The varying needs of the partners met with a balance of training, product development and media activities.
