Source: Xtra West, Victoria Times Colonist
Vancouver city councilor Tim Stevenson wants city hall to invest $25,000 into a Tourism Vancouver marketing campaign specifically aimed at attracting US lesbians to the city.
Stevenson is planning to introduce a motion in council calling for the investment today, reports Vancouver's Xtra West newspaper. The public will be invited to speak to the motion on July 24.
Stevenson says the idea for the motion came about after he saw a report from the gay and lesbian market research firm Community Marketing Inc that ranked Vancouver as the number one international destination among lesbians. Among both gay and lesbian travelers, Vancouver was the fourth most preferred place to travel after Paris, London and Puerto Vallarta, according to Stevenson.
"I thought this would be really an important thing to do because I think the lesbian market tends to get forgotten, so it was just a gradual thing over time," Stevenson explains.
The economics are staggering, Victoria Times Colonist reports.
Candice Gibson, manager of consumer marketing at Tourism Vancouver, said the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered tourism market from America alone is worth approximately $50 billion annually.
The lesbian market could be worth "tens of millions" of dollars to Vancouver, according to Gibson.
Councilor Peter Ladner acknowledges the importance of that market but believes Tourism Vancouver should be using its own budget for any such plan.
"It's not city council's business to make specific decisions about specific marketing initiatives by Tourism Vancouver," said Ladner.
"If we start to do that, where does it end?" he said.
Tourism is a big business in the Lower Mainland.
There were about nine million visitors to Metro Vancouver last year, and they spent about $4.6 billion.
But Gibson said Vancouver tourism is currently "flat," with zero growth.
There has been a decline in U.S. visitors of six per cent and without the increase in Canadian visitors to the region there would be decline of four per cent.
In a description of the project accompanying a notice about the motion, Stevenson says the proposed Tourism Vancouver campaign will attempt to generate one million impressions from lesbian travelers in the US annually.
"They're targeting certain magazines, certain communities, certain centres, and they're hoping for a million hits in a year, so it's a pretty big strategy.
"We think that the returns will be really worthwhile, and we know that lesbians really like to visit Vancouver - they feel safe, it's an open city, and one with a really good history of legal rights," says Stevenson.
"I think it's about time," says the Vancouver Pride Society's sponsorship coordinator Caryl Dolinko.
The notion that lesbians don't have money is a misplaced one, she adds.
"I think that probably 10 or 15 years ago, that was probably true. But I think that we've all changed. We've got money. We spend money. We certainly travel," Dolinko emphasizes, noting that a lot of women already come up to Vancouver, part of the reason for that being lesbians from Canada are also traveling a lot more and spending a lot more money when they do.
"I think opening up the communications [on] the West Coast is key, and the rest of the States for that matter," she adds.
Full article: Stevenson motion aimed at attracting lesbian tourists | Xtra West
Vancouver should lure lesbian tourists: councillor | Victoria Times Colonist