World class, eh?

[ganjavih]

World class, eh?

Jul. 9, 2006. 07:30 AM
SHARDA PRASHAD
BUSINESS REPORTER

Mark Rothenberg and his family are accidental tourists in Toronto.

Rothenberg is snapping a picture on the waterfront while his wife and two daughters saunter toward an afternoon out on the islands. From the camera, map, casual clothing and relaxed appearance, it's evident they're visitors.

The California family's three-night stay has covered the regular tourist haunts, such as the CN Tower, Chinatown, the Olympic Spirit Toronto museum. And Casa Loma, which the family says fell short of their expectations.

"We know it's the pride of the city, but it doesn't rank high up at all," argues Rothenberg, an architect, who says there are better castles near his home.

"We just couldn't wait to get out of there," his wife Alice quickly adds, as their young daughters nod in agreement.

The family usually vacations in Europe — last year they went to Greece. On a scale of 1-to-10, Toronto rates a 7 as a world class holiday destination in their minds.

It's telling that the Rothenbergs are here as an afterthought. It wasn't a carefully orchestrated, strategic ad campaign or even word of mouth that brought them to Toronto. One of the girls, Shayna, took part in a figure skating competition, and they just continued the journey.

"We looked at a map and asked where have we not been," says Alice.

Toronto, then, is not the centre of the universe. It's not even world class, mayor David Miller acknowledges.

Unlike Montreal, Toronto is little known internationally, Miller said last week when asked where Toronto might fall short in its bid to host Expo 2015. Rome, New York, London, Tokyo — those are world-class destinations. Consider that the New York Times best-seller, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, credits Toronto with just two must-sees, while London and Paris each have at least 10.

Michael Ennamorato, senior vice-president at market research firm TNS Canadian Facts, who specializes in the travel and tourism sector, agrees Toronto simply isn't a world-class city when it comes to attracting tourists.

That's a crucial point. Visitors like the Rothenbergs are vital for Toronto's economy given that tourism ranks as the sixth-largest economic contributor to the city, bringing in about $4 billion a year.

And the issue takes on added relevance when one considers the early closure of The Lord of the Rings, the high dollar, gas prices, the SARS hangover, the proposed passport requirement for U.S. visitors and gun violence that has plagued the city.

So, what's a not-so-world class city to do if one of its largest industries is tourism?

Toronto could reinvent parts of itself. The waterfront, for example, has long been touted as a potential attraction. Toronto could also add newer attractions, as it did with last month's opening of the new opera house. Note, too, the multimillion-dollar redesigns of the Royal Ontario Museum and Art Gallery of Ontario.

New York is a good example of how urban rebirth. In the 1970s it was known more for high crime rates than as a coveted holiday destination. But thanks to a citywide cleanup and a Big Apple campaign that began decades earlier, tourism brought in $23 billion (U.S.) last year.

And not just big cities reinvent themselves. Once known as a sleepy industrial city, in the 1980s Glasgow, Scotland, launched a "Glasgow's miles better" campaign that helped attract a record 325,000 visitors the year of the launch. The campaign was effective, with conservative magazine The Economist conceding Glasgow was "miles from anywhere ... Its greatest asset is its noisy new confidence."

Why is tourism important?

Besides the obvious growth in sales at restaurants, hotels and bars, more money coming into the economy means more infrastructure and attractions relative to the city's population. A successful Olympic or Expo bid would be more likely if the city beautified the Toronto's ugly thorn — the waterfront.

To put tourist dollars in Toronto pockets, Miller told Star reporter Donovan Vincent, "we have to be systematic about it ... Montreal does it, they're very smart about it. Things like this soccer tournament (the FIFA under-20 World Cup planned for next year) will go a long way to giving Toronto a strong name around the world."

Toronto unsuccessfully bid for the 2008 Olympic Games, which were won by Beijing. And it's trying again with a bid for Expo 2015.

Gaining the world-class holiday status can also be aided by the effective use of advertising and other marketing campaigns. More and more, cities are attracting tourists by using business strategies as a model, launching marketing campaigns made up of brands, logos and fat budgets.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
`Toronto needs

to understand that even if it has a diversity of things (to offer), it's not enough.What the city needs to focus on is what are the things Toronto does better?'

Kenneth Wong, marketing professor at Queen's University School of Business

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Tourism Toronto, for example, invested $4 million, 13 months of time and thousands of surveys to come up with "Toronto Unlimited" last year. The slogan was the result of the Toronto Branding Project, where "the goal was to create a single Toronto brand and to develop a fresh new way of communicating the city's strong and dynamic identity to the rest of the world."

But the brand was widely panned, and even the mayor at the time called it an "an embarrassment and indefensible." Miller softened his tone somewhat last week, saying, "It works for tourism, but it's not a slogan that matters in getting known."

"We're trying to keep Toronto as top-of-the-mind as Bermuda, the Caribbean or Europe," says Andrew Weir, spokesperson for Tourism Toronto. The not-for-profit agency, which is responsible for the campaign and the majority of Toronto's advertising efforts, receives both public and private funding, including the voluntary hotel levy.

To boost visitors, Tourism Toronto this year advertised the city in two pages of a six-page "high-impact insert" that was delivered in 27 U.S. newspapers, including the New York Times. Tourism Toronto has also launched a subway ad campaign in Japan, worked with tour operators in Germany and used print, radio and outdoor ads to draw British visitors.

Weir says it's important that potential tourists understand the Toronto story. This includes selling Toronto as a "creative and imaginative city as culturally diverse as any. With unlimited possibility for the family, business or gay traveller ... it's creative and urban ... (offering the) highest of high festivals, plus fringe festivals ... with unlimited stories, unlimited theatre and arts."

His version of the Toronto story — as well as those of other city officials surveyed — is considerably longer and more rambling than those of other cities: "I love New York," "Virginia is for lovers," and "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."

Greg Hermus, associate director of the Canadian Tourism Research Institute, said in an earlier interview that marketing was a problem. "The awareness of what Canada has to offer hasn't been there ... that might be the single most important factor as to why we've been losing market share from the United States."

Weir is more precise about how Tourism Toronto is going to raise awareness. It will target communities. For the gay community, for example, it will use a "slick, cheeky" campaign in gay publications with a tagline, "Explore the city that's as open-minded as you are."

A report by the city last week found that the major reason tourists come to Toronto is to visit friends and relatives, followed closely by pleasure holidays. But Weir says the organization can't target everyone, so there is no specific campaign for friends and relatives. With its small tourism budget, the city has one trailer with tourism pamphlets, not to mention an infoTOgo catchphrase, which a spokesperson says will help increase spending by friends and relatives visiting the city.

Canadians make up the majority of Toronto tourists — of the 19 million annual visitors, 13 million are from Ontario and 1.6 million from other provinces. American visitors number about 3 million while another 1.5 million come from other countries. The Conference Board of Canada expects the number of American visitors to drop by more than 2 per cent this year, while overseas visitors will rise by more than 7 per cent.

Tourism Toronto's top three priorities are to target U.S. cities that hug the border; other key U.S. cities, such as Chicago, Boston, New York; and overseas markets, mainly the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan.

Toronto is not trying to be another London or New York, says Weir. Copying another city is not going to draw more tourists. Instead, the city is focusing on what makes it unique, such as its rich cultural diversity.

But when people make holiday plans, is cultural diversity a real selling point?

No, says Kenneth Wong, marketing professor at Queen's University School of Business. People think about going to Disney World or a world-class salmon fly-fishing location, not Orlando or the shores of the Miramichi River.

"Toronto needs to understand that even if it has a diversity of things (to offer), it's not enough," says Wong. What the city needs to focus on, he adds, is "what are the things Toronto does better?"

The Toronto International Film Festival, Caribana and the Pride parade are three things we do better, says Ashwin Joshi, marketing professor at York University's Schulich School of Business. What's common in each is they target a specific market segment. Toronto should have one event of this magnitude every month and target it to 12 different groups. Yes, others will come, but one event won't cannibalize tourists from another.

"How about the world's largest Diwali Mela in October — we can pull it off given that there is a base of over 500,000 South Asians," says Joshi. "Same goes for Eid. This would pull in South Asians from all across the northern U.S., and there are tons there."

Torontonians need to be patient because creating a world-class image takes years. As Miller pointed out last week, Montreal has been working on developing its world-class image for several decades, first by winning Expo '67, then by hosting the Olympics in 1976.

Toronto is at least learning that in the fight to attract visitors, you have to spend money to make money. Tourism Toronto, for example, kicked in $3 million to help bring The Lord of the Rings to the city, and advance ticket sales were predicted to generate about $14 million of economic activity. Despite a run that ended much earlier than expected, it still pumped money into the economy.

The world fair, which would cost about $5 billion to put on, would be expected to lose $700 million. But on the upside, it would attract 70 million visitors and could leave the city with a revitalized waterfront and other attractions that will draw future tourists.

Were Toronto to put in all of these efforts, would it get a world-class reputation and generate the hundreds of millions of tourism dollars that cities like New York and London do? Nobody knows for certain.

The Rothenbergs, for one, say they'll tell their friends and relatives to visit Toronto. The inhabitants are proud, the city is safe, with interesting architecture — and it's walkable.

What it lacks is the maturity and history inherent in world-class cities that tourists consider "must-see."

For that, Toronto needs to age gracefully.

 

[bizorky]

Good article, and thanks for posting it.

There has been so much talk about a city in "crisis" that it over-shadows the need of doing something about it. Framing all issues in language that describes a city in crisis is really negative. It becomes too easy to see what is wrong and obscures what is good, and what has great potential for the future. Improving the city should not be work alone; it should be a pleasure as well since all the improvements can have a positive impact on its citizens. The building of cultural attractions is a good case in point. But we can benefit from a large number of smaller cultural draws as well. And citizens should not always be looking to government for solutions (not that all are); there are many small things that people can do that add up to make the city a better and more interesting place.

The reference to Montreal is important. For many years, that city suffered due to all the obvious reasons we have heard about, yet it managed to maintain a place on the international map. At the same time, Toronto was doing far better financially, but was too "inward" looking to focus on this in an organized manner. Montreal attracted international organizations which made it a destination, and maintained an emphasis on keeping up its cultural heritage. It also managed to keep its main avenues for tourism looking beautiful - all at a time when it was going broke.

Toronto has huge potential - in cultural attractions, business and in terms of being a comfortable city to live in. Improving its vibrancy and importance will make it more "world-class," and it won't through adopting (or worrying about) the title "world class."

 

[tudararms]

I've always maintained that Toronto's problem is that it has yet to discover or embrace a unique sense of self. Until we understand implicitly who and what we are how can we clearly and effectively promote this to others? The only image we have found to represent ourselves is a multicultural one, but this is problematic: I've argued again and again that although diversity is crucial for a modern cosmopolitan city it is not something that is 'unique' to Toronto, that most cities in the developed western world became pluralist and multicultural, to one degree or another, over the last 30 years, and that claims of multicultural supremacy must surely appear somewhat irrelevent in the modern age. I have always suspected that in Toronto we have latched on to a *free-to-be-you-and-me" multicultural sloganism born of the freedom-loving 60's that took flight here at a time of great expansion, for specific socio-political reasons. It was safe and politically expedient, but we have effectively entrenched one single image at the expense of all others, the pervasiveness of which has necessarily erased all that predated it, and anything else that may have proceeded it, and the irony is that in adopting an image that we think of as exciting because it is diverse, is in fact transparant, and only serves to underscore our lack of self-awareness as a city.

The challenge for our city now is to reveal its true essence which is to say that which transcends our differences and diversity, and that separates us from other places: Montreal has a 'franco/euro-american" blend flavour that Montrealers of varied ethnic and cultural backgrounds share and embrace as a link that unites their diversity, and as such that provides a clear message that can be transmitted to others that captures succinctly what it is that might be of appeal there; Vancouver has the 'westcoast-natural/outdoorsy and easyliving-trippy" vibe that again also unites its people regardless of background. Although this is oversimplifying what the draw may be to these two cities, it is testament to the sense of self of these cities that such complex issues can be distilled so. Conversely, what message does Toronto project, other than that of its diversity? What is it that we perceive here to capture the imagination of its residents and of others? We have effectively turned our back on our history: Time and time again I've seen nothing but ambivalence at best, contempt and disdain at worst for our 'history', as if acknowledging our colonial British past is somehow a rejection of our diversity (would Montreal take that same approach?). Furthermore, in the vacuum of more than thirty years of a multicultural appropriation of our identity we are at odds to even attempt to delineate what is original or unique to here, consistently keeping ourselves in the shadow of other cities that we may superficially resemble, such as New York or Chicago.

The good news is, as Toronto grows and expands there seems to be an emerging confidence that is increasingly self-referential, even in the face of 'big brother' multiculturalism. Succesive generations of newcomers from all backgrounds have more attachment to what is here than to what their parents or even grandparents now, tell them about the 'old country'. If we can get past the politically correct fetish of multiculturalism we may be able to embrace our diversity even more by moving on from it, allowing for the emergence of an identity that is not constrained by diversity but freed from it. Mullticulturalism was a necessary stage in the evolution of our city, but our obsession with it has outstayed its welcome. Until we can find the confidence to assert that although 'yes indeed' we are diverse, we are more importantly something bigger than that, that our 'sum' is bigger than our "parts", such that if Toronto is somewhat 'undefined' or unnoticed in the rest of the world it will surely be the assertion of this confidence that will capture the attention of those who look our way.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

tudararms:

The challenge for our city now is to reveal its true essence which is to say that which transcends our differences and diversity, and that separates us from other places

But that is our true essence. Toronto isn't something you can just boil down to some one line statement for tourist consumption. It has nothing to do with political correctness, but a simple statement of fact. As a challenge, why don't you think of a branding of our city that doesn't involve such lines of arguments?

Nobody is being disdainful of the colonial past, but to fetishize THAT as the way Toronto is now is just completely inaccurate.

AoD

 

[DarnDirtyApe]

That's the problem - Toronto IS the embodiness of multiculturalism, but so many other cities claim that they are also multicultural just because they have some visible minorities. It's become cliched to promote yourself as ethnically diverse, so we feel that we've lost one of our greatest selling points.

I don't think we need to give up on advertising our diversity, because we haven't really been promiting well in the first place. Many American visitors that I've met have been amazed by the fact that people here are so integrated.

I think we need to change the whole mindset towards tourist advertising. All too often we're promoting the same old tourist traps (CN Tower, Casa Lama, etc.) and forgetting that most cities would kill to have the thriving neighbourhoods we have. This city has so many amazing restaurants, but we never advertise our great food!

 

[pw20]

"Toronto isn't something you can just boil down to some one line statement for tourist consumption."

And New York is? And Chicago is?

No... but the I (heart) New York logo captures the city.

I agree with Tundra... wasn't the Toronto Unlimitted campaign supposed to provide a unique identity for the city. All it did was simply argue that you could be or do anything here. There was no "there there" to quote Are Be. I actually preferred the "You Belong Here" bumper stickers that cropped up after the SARS incident. Personally I would have hoped for something along the lines of "Toronto... find your story"
No large city of 5 million people can be summed up in one sentence but arguing that "the city can be anything to anyone" offers nothing significant either. Toronto Unlimitted IMO continues to be a complete and utter flop.

 

[allabootmatt]

I hate to say it but I think a big source of our problems is the level of self-depracation, or even self-loathing, with which Torontonians often describe their city. It's hard to convince others that T-O is something special when the media, in particular, constantly bemoan our hopeless inferiority to places like New York, London, and even, shockingly to me, Montreal. Montreal is wonderful, no doubt, and is fairly well known, but does anyone seriously think it has a qualitatively higher international profile than Toronto does? Or more interesting attractions? More vibrant neighbourhoods? At worst on any such comparison it's a wash. The difference is that Montreal, and Montrealers, while recognising that their city has its shortcomings, nontheless genuinely love and promote it in a way that seems sincere, because it is. And that's compelling.

The problem is that Torontonians, in our frenzy to put ourselves down, fail to recognise that to many visitors the city does seem pretty special. Look at what is written in any international travel press about the city. Look at your personal experiences--I for one have rarely hosted any visitor to Toronto that wasn't pretty impressed by it, and more than a few have been blown away.

 

[ganjavih]

I hate to say it but I think a big source of our problems is the level of self-depracation, or even self-loathing, with which Torontonians often describe their city. It's hard to convince others that T-O is something special when the media, in particular, constantly bemoan our hopeless inferiority to places like New York, London, and even, shockingly to me, Montreal.

I don't think we should have to convince anyone of anything... the city should speak for itself. That's why I think the focus of the discussion should be on how Toronto can be improved and not on how Toronto should be better marketed.

Montreal is wonderful, no doubt, and is fairly well known, but does anyone seriously think it has a qualitatively higher international profile than Toronto does? Or more interesting attractions? More vibrant neighbourhoods?

Actually, I would answer yes to most of those. When I've gone abroad, Vancouver and Montreal seem to be the highest profile Canadian cities, very little is known about Toronto other than the CN Tower... although that has been changing recently. And as much as I love TO, I do think that Montreal is a more vibrant city.

At worst on any such comparison it's a wash. The difference is that Montreal, and Montrealers, while recognising that their city has its shortcomings, nontheless genuinely love and promote it in a way that seems sincere, because it is. And that's compelling.

I agree that pride is important and there's lots to be proud of in TO, but if we make the changes necessary to make TO great instead of good, the pride will come naturally.

The problem is that Torontonians, in our frenzy to put ourselves down, fail to recognise that to many visitors the city does seem pretty special. Look at what is written in any international travel press about the city. Look at your personal experiences--I for one have rarely hosted any visitor to Toronto that wasn't pretty impressed by it, and more than a few have been blown away.

My experience with visitors from abroad has been mixed although mostly positive. I've also found that those who visit both TO and Montreal tend to be more impressed with Montreal. So I don't find Montreal's mention in the article to be shocking at all.

Instead of trying to design flashy new ad campaigns or urging Torontonians to be more proud (which I agree we should be), let's clean up the city, make it prettier, cleaner, fix our parks, fix our waterfront, tidy up our streetscapes, increase the number patios, improve the architecture, etc, etc, so when people experience the city, they'll have the urge to come back and will tell others check us out as well.

 

[Antiloop33rpm]

I am really fond of Toronto and could easily list hundreds of aspects of the city that I find to enjoyable or unique about it (something I do often in Quebec where the city gets no love or sympathy). In many respects Toronto is a rather underated city.

That being said, it is important to keep in mind the history of the city itself. Toronto is in many respects, a young city. Not only that, a large portion of Toronto (and the GTA's) growth has taken place in the 20th and current centuries. How long ago was the city more commonly known as 'Hogtwon', 'The Big Smoke' or 'Trawna'? Yes these terms are still used but not with the same frequency or near derogatory manner they once were. If I just do a little bit of personal reflection and think about the Toronto I remember from the 80's and the Toronto of today, its actual a rather impressive difference.

Take a look a the archival thread in the photo section of this forum, or movies, photography or media of this sort created right into the 80's. What you see is that classic image of 'Hogtown'. You see the industrial past butted next to the newly emmerging financial district neighboring the Queen and Parliment area. Even today the city is just starting to build into the former (and in some case, still) industrial lands and reinvigorate life into many downtown neighborhoods. If you think about some of the city building achievements since the 1960's you have a 16 lane superhighway, a 35 year anniversary of a failed project, SRT, and Shepphard. Yes there are the other two subway lines and to a small extent, GO, but beyond that, there are not a lot of grand and urban city building projects too note. Im sure many people are going to take exception to this statement, but, much of Toronto up until recently has largely about falling in line with status quo and not much else.

Toronto as of late has been doing a lot of things right, especially in comparison to most North American cities. In some respects, the period Toronto is going through right now is one that is highly akward, dealing with issues of how to preserve its heritage while accomodating growth and putting the industrial days of past firmly behind. Articles like the one posted (and many others along the same lines) as well as the TWRC and all its affiliated projects, comprehensive growth plans, a strong urban housing market, and changing dyanamics in the former boroughs are all signs that the city is lookig forward to something quite different from what it has known. The past 20 years have brought about a very noticeable change for Toronto, and the next 20 will probably be even more impressive.

But its going to take time and its going to take a lot of debate, discussion, planning and work. Its going to take small projects like sidewalk widenings and improved streetscapes to large scale projects such as cultural institutions and public transit investment.

Toronto may be 200 years old (give or take) but in terms of it being an urban, international metropolis, I tend to view that as something that is relatively new to the history of the city and something that is really only now just starting to get underway and take shape.

 

[TdotTrickyRicky]

"I don't think we should have to convince anyone of anything... the city should speak for itself. That's why I think the focus of the discussion should be on how Toronto can be improved and not on how Toronto should be better marketed."

I think this is the key. Toronto will never be a strongly branded tourist destination. What is important is that we promote activities and places in the city and organizations such that they gain ever increasing international stature. While the city may never be the top centre for any one human pursuit I would argue that our advantage is our diversity of strengths.

With regard to Toronto's international exposure I find anecdotally people belong into two camps: those for whom Canada has some real meaning in their lives because a friend or relative lives here in which case Toronto is almost always the city they know about most, and those who know Canada only as a superficial idea in which case Vancouver or Montreal are as or more likely to figure first in their imaginations. You would be surprised how many people fall into the first category.

 

[Mark Dowling]

I lived in Glasgow during the "miles better" campaign. The campaign had a Mr. Men motif.

www.theglasgowstory.com/i...=TGSA05070

It coincided with Glasgow having been awarded the European City of Culture and gearing up for their year of events. The thing is that Glasgow has a lot of gems which were hidden under a layer of hundreds of years of industrial grime that once cleaned up made the city look, well, miles better.

Here are some of them:
www.undiscoveredscotland....index.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cha...Mackintosh

The point is that the city identified something and threw money at it until it worked but it was a sustained campaign with several waypoint events rather than a single event you try and build a brand on which I fear may be the intent of Expo.

Unlike the Toronto Unlimited, it was a campaign that really gelled with people, made them smile.

 

[rbtaylor]

I hate to say it but I think a big source of our problems is the level of self-depracation, or even self-loathing, with which Torontonians often describe their city. ... and more than a few have been blown away.

Sure, complain about self deprecation then follow up with a crack about the tunnel effect of poorly designed buildings. I've seen people blown over by a strong gust of wind but never blown away.

 

[papamanjr]

I think the best cities in the world are the places that the people who live in them, love. it's contagious.

new yorkers don't want to be anywhere else. motreal folk have a blast in their own backyard. people from paris, london, madrid - you name it, they enjoy their city; and people will always flock towards that and want to take part in it.

so until torontonians start enjoying their own city for everything it's worth and then some, no amount of marketing or money will ever be able to create that 'buzz'.

are we really expecting tourists to make this city great?

 

[SD2]

It's interesting that the article failed to note that Montreal receives far less tourists than Toronto. Montreal is a great city, but I think it's international stature is, at the very least, slightly overrated.


The focus should be on building a better city. We should build the city for ourselves...and people will come.

That said, building a strong marketing campaign is very important as well. It's incredibly frustrating that in a city of such intense creativity we end up with garbage like "Toronto Unlimited". I think even the fact that the city is supposedly a mystery to many could be spun into a fantastic marketing campaign. If only the city would get in touch with the true creative community in the city as opposed to the corporate groups they usually get...that end up producing corporate crap.

It's also worth remembering that you're not going to please everyone. No matter what you do, you're going to have people who don't enjoy the city. The Star, etc. seem to enjoy focusing on such people, but the fact remains that most visitors have a positive impression. This isn't to say we should rest on the status quo, but rather to just keep building the city for ourselves...that's what makes any city unique.

 

[allabootmatt]

Tdot: interesting point about people who know Toronto through an acquaintance. Being a primary way-stop for so many foreign diasporas (diasprot?) does have the advantage of giving Toronto hundreds of thousands of opportunities for word of mouth...

I didn't mean the above post to suggest that being rather more upbeat about Toronto would magically fix all of its problems--there are easily a dozen things about the city that could be radically improved, and should be ASAP. But the point of my comparison with Montreal is that Montrealers know and acknowledge that their city has shortcomings, and seek to improve them, while at the same time being immensely proud of the city and what it does have.