Description:
On April 17, 2024, Visit Austin partnered with Air Canada to celebrate the new non-stop flight launching in May from Montréal to Austin. This flight represents a significant milestone in air travel connectivity with nonstop service, connecting two cities with rich history, diverse culture, and thriving culinary scenes. With limited marketing budget to support the new flight, the event had to work twice as hard for our team: driving interest with attendees spanning traditional media, travel trade and top-tier influencers.
Objectives:
Our initial goal was to host 50 attendees, but the final turnout was 85. And best of all, the venue was packed until the very end of the evening. The results also prove we had the right attendees to help promote the new nonstop flight.
In the month following the event, we saw a combined 13.7M social and media impressions, with $93.5K in earned media value, more than double our investment. There were also 11 published stories about the flight launch, with 3 stories specifically about the event hosted by Visit Austin.
Even though our influencers were not paid or required to post for the event, they brought their unique perspectives and enthusiasm when uploading content to inspire their audience to consider Austin as a must-visit destination. Their presence helped amplify our message and create meaningful connections. Influencers attending the event published 22 posts (stories and in-feed combined). Total reach was 66K across the influencers, with 3.5 million social impressions and 528 total engagements.
Following the event, we researched the volume of relevant searches in the Canadian market Period-over-Period and Year-over-Year to see if the event sparked more measurable interest in traveling to Austin.
As shown in the supplemental charts from Google Trends, we saw a measurable lift in searches within Canada, and Quebec specifically, for travel-related searches. We also see a significant increase in searches for “flights to Austin” YoY and an uptick in Austin-based searches in the Hotels & Accommodations category.
While flight performance from Air Canada is highly confidential and cannot be shared outside of our organization, they shared that “the flight is doing great, and we are generally happy with its performance. And of course, we appreciate all of your efforts that contributed to our success.”
We are already seeing a measurable lift in future hotel bookings of visitors from Montréal, using Zartico’s Key Data pacing data.
Project Costs: $40,000 - including travel, event production and artist fees for the event.
Media Coverage:
In-house or Agency: Agency