There is always an incredible amount of planning activity involved with a prestigious event such as Canada-e-Connect.

Site tours of the hotel property and function space are always a welcome opportunity for colleagues to meet one another to discuss myriad conference program details, from ensuring optimal delegate seating arrangements and audio/visual, to planning exquisite culinary offerings.

I was recently invited to participate on a site tour of the conference host hotel, the Fairmont Waterfront, along with conference chair Jens Thraenhart, and other key members of the Canada-e-Connect conference planning team and the Canadian Tourism Commission.

Hosted by Tiffany Tibbits, hotel conference services manager and liason for the CEC program, the tour enabled much lively discussion around countless elements that will help ensure the program truly is the premier event of its kind in Canada.

The Fairmont Waterfront is a beautiful hotel property with a stellar location, and has been consistently recognized by Conde Naste Traveler in their annual “Gold List”.

The Gold List, an annual readers’ choice poll names the best hotels, resorts and cruise lines around the world, rating them on criteria including location, service and guestrooms.

Canada-e-Connect delegates may qualify for a group rate of $159 (single/double), but reservations have to be booked before October 11, 2007–only five weeks away. Click here for more information about the Fairmont Waterfront on the Canada-e-Connect website.

Today Jens Thraenhart and the conference planning team have posted the program agenda on the conference website.

Wednesday November 7th registration details, Canadian e-Tourism Council Summit information, receptions, speaker schedules, panel details, e-Tourism Awards ceremonies…it’s all there. Plus a whole lot more.

Canada-e-Connect is less than three short months away, so it’s not too soon to secure your place at the conference and arrange your travel plans!

Yesterday I had a chance to visit with Jens at the CTC offices in Vancouver so I snapped a shot of the conference program beta version on every Web 2.0 guru’s most trusted Web 2.0 technology: the white-board!

Yesterday Google Maps announced that they have made it much easier to embed their maps into your website.

Naturally I thought I would test out the new widget so I created a little map covering the Canada-e-Connect conference and events.

And it’s true–embedding really is much easier.

View Larger Map

A new report by eMarketer estimates that 21 million Canadians used the Internet regularly in 2006, up from 20 million in 2005. This translates into 63.4% of Canada’s population is online, roughly the same penetration as the U.S. market. The same report estimates nearly 25 million regular users by 2011.

A separate report by comScore ranks Canada ninth in the world for total internet usage, right behind India and just above Italy. The comScore report shows an 11% jump in Canadian Internet users from Jan. 2006 to January 2007. That’s a higher percentage than the U.S., Japan, Germany and the U.K.

So maybe it’s time to focus some attention on Canada. Attend Canada-e-Connect Conference in November in Vancouver.

There are a number of web awards currently open for submissions online, and today I was considering what makes the first ever Canadian e-Tourism Awards different, or unique from other options. Is there a compelling reason why online travel and hospitality marketers in Canada and around the world should submit their nominations to the Canadian e-Tourism Awards over another premier award event?

Of course there is! In fact, there are many reasons:

First of all, the Canadian e-Tourism Awards are exactly that–Canadian. The Awards are open to enterprises in Canada and around the planet who promote uniquely Canadian experiences. Is there another online awards that specifically focusses on creative talent and success stories in the Canadian travel and tourism arena on an international scale?

The Awards further offer some exciting and unique category segments that simply aren’t available in any other online award format. The “Best Website Design” category is bound to be an anticipated announcement, but there are more exciting categories to be judged. For example, the “online marketing campaign” category highlights successful practices in channel integration, return on investment and the ability to achieve a specific goal and prompt a call-to-action. Talk about a focus on quality.

Consider the award for “innovation“, which focusses on the use of technology to leverage consumer trends and contribute to strategic alignment. The Canadian e-Tourism Awards are looking for nominations that may include mapping applications, GPS applications, Google Earth integration, wireless marketing applications and social media interpretations. The use of other emerging web technologies is proliferating in the online travel space in Canada, and the Awards offer an incredible opportunity for Canadian organizations to be recognized for their innovative efforts.

If you take a look at the who’s-who member list of the Canadian Tourism Council and you’ll find an incredible community of e-talent. Clearly, council members are experts in their fields, and these are the e-tourism professionals who, along with the general public, will be judging the e-Tourism Awards. Where else can travel and tourism industry organizations be judged and recognized by true experts (and colleagues) in the Canadian travel sphere? The quality of judging in itself should be a very compelling reason to participate.

Yahoo! has agreed to support the Awards by enabling the Canadian and International public to vote online for their favorite Canadian travel websites and campaigns. This public input will factor importantly in the e-Tourism Council’s selection of the best overall campaign, to which Yahoo! Canada will also award the Yahoo! Big Idea Chair, recognized worldwide as a hallmark for exceptional achievement in online marketing creativity.

The first ever Canadian e-Tourism Awards are going to be an exciting event, and I’m personally excited to see who will be named the best-in-show in both the Industry and Traveller categories.

With less than two weeks left until the submission deadline, I urge you not to wait any longer to submit your nominations. Entries will be accepted until August 31, 2007 from around the world so long as they feature, market, or sell a Canadian destination, product, attraction, or experience.

“You snapped it in a terrific shot. You couldn’t wait to blog about it. Or maybe you caught it on film. The point is you got it. You posted it. Now we want to recognize you. Can’t win if you don’t enter.”

Jens Thraenhart truly captured the essence of what is so intriguing about the Traveller categories within the first-ever Canadian e-Tourism Awards in a post today on his blog. It’s a great article, and well worth a read.

Linkage
Canadian e-Tourism Awards [Website]
Image thanks to [Fun Researcher]

Canada-e-Connect keynote presenter Anthony D. Williams is the co-author (with Don Tapscott) of WIKINOMICS: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Mr. Williams is also Vice President and Executive Editor for New Paradigm, based in Toronto.

This morning I spent some time reading through the Wikinomics website, and I’ve found it to be an exciting resource. In a recent post on their blog, Denis Hancock uploaded a video captured at the Seoul Digital Forum. The piece features Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt defining the term Web 3.0 after being asked the question by an audience member.

From the Wikinomics blog:

His prediction for how the Web 3.0 might play out focuses on a “different way to build applications”… and it sounds a lot like the next evolution of the mash ups concept Don and Anthony wrote about in the book. Key sound bites include “applications that are pieced together”… “applications that are relatively small”… “applications can run on any device”…”applications are distributed virally” (social networks, email)… and perhaps most interestingly:

“That’s a very different application model than we’ve ever seen in computing. Very different from the mainframe era, very different from the PC industry, and likely to be very, very large. There are low barriers to entry, the new generation of tools… make it relatively easy to do, solve a lot of problems, and work everywhere.”

View Eric Schmidt’s live response here:

Destination marketing expert Bill Geist maintains an excellent and very active blog called Bill Geist’s Zeitgeist.

Bill has terrific perspective around destination marketing, and he intuitively believes that more transparency in marketing through social media helps to build trust with visitors and consumers.

Yesterday, the Zeitgeist featured a post reminding that adding authentic, dynamic customer reviews on travel websites simply makes good business sense. And for good reason too:

Excerpted from Bill’s Blog:

“In Tuesday’s Z-News, we opined on the reticence on the part of some destination marketers to allow consumer generated comments on their websites. We, naturally, think it’s a necessary step…but that’s just us.

Minutes after the Z-News was posted, I came across an interesting bit of research (thanks to Ben at the Church of the Customer Blog) that indicates that 77% of businesses that included online consumer reviews are seeing increased site traffic…and 42% report higher average order values.

Just a little more for your pipe…”

Many organizations still resist featuring customer reviews on their sites for fear of negative feedback, but we have to remember that a chance to overcome an objective or solve a customer problem can be a chance to win-over that customer, guest, or visitor for life.

We are currently extending valuable partnership opportunities to qualified organizations.

You can access a copy of our partnership package here http://www.canadaeconnect.com/CEC_Partnership-Package_Eng_final.pdf. To secure a partnership opportunity, contact Trevor Roald (roald.trevor@ctc-cct.ca) to discuss availability and options.

Why partner with Canada-e-Connect?

• Benefit from associating with key organizations
• Create, maintain and enhance your brands awareness in the Canadian tourism industry
• Elevate your profile in the eyes of key tourism decision makers
• Create new business opportunities for your company
• Benefit from the media and industrial recognition given to CTC events
• Be seen as an intellectual influencer to your industry peers
• Take advantage of CEC’s high-traffic website as well as press and news service

I recommend securing your partnerships soon. Momentum is building and partnership opportunities are going very fast. Have a look at http://www.canadaeconnect.com/partner.php to view all standard partnership packages, or let us know if you have some other ideas how you may want to get involved.

Fostering innovation in online tourism marketing practices depends, of course, on attracting and retaining the very best talent that Canada has to offer. In a time when countless industries are competing for vital people resources and creativity, our industry must seek to nurture relationships with the brightest up-and-comers of our craft.

And where should we be looking to find talent? Our academic institutions is a wonderful place to start.

Canada-e-Connect has initiated an exciting student contest to generate excitement within our schools about travel e-marketing, and to offer students a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to connect with, and learn from the industry’s brightest minds.

The Canada-e-Connect Student Competition offers Canadian graduate and senior undergraduate students in Canada and abroad, the opportunity to win a scholarship to participate in the first Canada-e-Connect Conference. Students may enter the competition by providing a proposal of a research paper, or business plan by October 1, 2007.

The topic is “how can the Internet and new emerging technologies be leveraged to market Canadian travel experiences to the world”.

Successful students would be invited to come to Canada-e-Connect, engage in the event, network and learn, and use the event as their final “lab” to complete their project.

This is a terrific initiative, and a wonderful opportunity for Canadian students to showcase their talent.

Click here to review the contest details, and you can hear Jens Thraenhart explain his inspiration for offering the contest in the following video: