June 2015 – Local Market (London Ontario)
Pure Grenada Developing Mobile App
The Compete Caribbean Program, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, the UK Department for International Development, and the Government of Canada, recently contracted London based TecVana Corporation, in partnership with Inglefield/Ogilvy and Mather Caribbean (IOM), to develop an integrated mobile platform solution for the Grenada Hotel and Tourism Association (GHTA) to showcase Pure Grenada to the world by displaying the island’s unspoiled geotourism offerings.
The goal is to position Grenada to be more competitive in the exploding geotourism sector which is expected to double to two billion international travelers a year by 2031. The Open World Connect (OWC) platform developed by TecVana was chosen for this task, and it will be customized in order to provide Grenada with an innovative approach to tourism marketing. The platform’s app will provide users anywhere in the world with free centralized one-stop quick access to real-time information such as activities, events, attractions, and adventures, as well as sustainable tourism projects taking place in Grenada.
Having this app will enable Grenada to provide a full interactive on-line visitor information centre at the users’ fingertips anywhere in the world. Savvy travellers will enjoy a loyalty programme that promotes community tourism by motivating users to get out and explore, discover, and experience all the great wonders that Grenada has to offer. Fanshawe College Interactive Media Design and Production helped TecVana design this creative solution to engage new markets with the objective of growth for the tourism sector.
})
According to Doug Matatall, CEO of TecVana, the app promotes tourism by allowing users to find and create their own adventures for places right in their own backyard or for more distant ones, such as Grenada”. Once populated with information from local businesses and tourism attractions, the app will shows users where to go for new adventures based on their interests, availability and the distance they wish to travel. Adventures are tracked with users keying in location codes which can allow for the development of a loyalty program that can give points to users which can later be redeem for promotional items and merchandise.
To explore the app simply go to www.geoadventuring.com. It is free and soon will be populated with all kinds of exciting information about Grenada. “As more and more tourism organizations adopt the Open World Connect platform, the growth in fans and followers will become significant and the corresponding traffic to the app will bring the value of awareness that tourism organizations so desperately seek” states Doug.
For more information, contact:
Doug Matatall
TecVana Corporation
Tel: 519-941-1818
Mobile: 519-671-7008
Or visit:
www.geoadventuring.com – for the app
www.facebook.com/geoadventuring
http://bit.ly/geoadventures - for YouTube
Additional Quotes
According to Matatall, “people tend to search for information for things to do, not community web sites”. The centralized platform maximizes mobile and social media SEO (discoverability) allowing tourism organizations to achieve major cost savings through economies of scale, a powerful ROI from the strengths of digital marketing, and more importantly, traffic through the power of a common user interface. “With this bid, TecVana is now well positioned to begin to roll out the solution across Ontario, Canada, the US, and of course, the rest of the Caribbean”.
Greg Klassen, Principal of T31 and former CEO of the Canadian Tourism Commission, stated that “Tecvana has created a digital marketing solution that the Canadian tourism sector urgently needs for Canada to have a competitive advantage in this industry. Tourism today is lacking a strong customer acquisition strategy that leverages the power of digital and mobile marketing.” Wayne Izumi of Izumi Outdoors feels that “the revitalization of the recreational fishing industry requires programs such as Open World Connect to get more of our youth active in the outdoors.”
Dan Mathieson, Mayor of Stratford Ontario stated: “Open World Connect combines disruptive innovation with digital media and information technology to provide small market communities an affordable opportunity to compete for tourism on a global scale which is absolutely critical for our economic growth”
According to Don McKay, Mayor Township of East Zorro-Tavistock stated “it is so important today to use mobile to connect people looking for something to do with local events and attractions happening when they want the information and how they want it”.
Compete Caribbean
Compete Caribbean is a private sector development program that provides technical assistance grants and investment funding to support productive development policies, business climate reforms, clustering initiatives and Small and Medium Size Enterprise (SME) development activities in the Caribbean region. The program, jointly funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) and the Government of Canada, supports projects in 15 Caribbean countries. Projects in the OECS countries are implemented in partnership with the Caribbean Development Bank
Go Pure Grenada
Go Pure Grenada is a sub brand of Grenada’s new destination brand “Pure Grenada: the Spice of the Caribbean” and the focus of Go Pure is to be a call to action in support of sustainable, community based tourism that enhances and sustains the character of Grenada’s unspoiled characteristics while also embracing new technologies that will enhance waste reduction, water efficiency, and energy efficiency. Go Pure Grenada is the creation of the Grenada Hotel and Tourism Association (GHTA) a membership based private sector group of tourism enterprises. The Majority of the Members of the GHTA are local enterprises managed by local employees resulting in a strong economic impact with low visitor volumes compared with mass tourism destinations.
Changing Tourism Industry
Tourism, the fourth fastest growing industry in the world today is expected to double over the next 15 years and most of that growth will come from the millennial generation. Increasing visitations is a powerful engine to grow revenues and the local economy.
Traditional marketing with print, direct mail, broadcast and radio is no longer effective for marketing tourism experiences. The digital era has ushered in new means for consumers to engage with tourism activities and has spawned a new model for tourism marketing! The way people find tourist information, plan their travel and their expectations of the travel experience has undergone dramatic change. It is now about eTourism and Geo-Tourism. Yet most tourism organizations are reticent to let go of their comfort zone of traditional marketing programs in favor of more powerful digital media.
eTourism & Geo Tourism
The current mobile generation is the driving force behind the eTourism model. Marketing is now all about digital content management, digital media marketing, social media marketing and mobile marketing. While a strong web presence with information about tourism business is important, it is now critical to have the ability to deliver this information to and engage with the digital consumer when they want it and how they want it. The most effective way to do this is with mobile. Modern travelers have a different interest in why they visit a destination. Today it is all about Geo Tourism; s tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place and its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage, uniqueness and the well-being of its residents. The potential for discovery is limitless; a place visitors would like to really get to know!
Who is TecVana
TecVana Corporation is a London based Digital Media Marketing firm specializing in mobile marketing for the tourism industry. The company was established in 2009. TecVana initially did extensive studies on how to revitalize the recreational fishing industry. Partnering with Izumi Outdoors, TecVana tested many different concepts but soon realized the problem was much bigger than just fishing. The future survivability of many of our small rural communities was now heavily dependent upon just being able to get more of our youth involved in the outdoors. The program was expanded and called Geo Adventuring; an integrated web base app that was developed with the help of a work project at Fanshawe College in order to ensure the look, feel, touch and functionality would appeal to the youth. TecVana was commissioned to do a study for the Ontario Horse Racing Industry in 2014 to demonstrate to this industry how Geo Adventuring could be used to grow a new fan base for the horse racing industry. With the help of funds from the NRC-IRAP, collaboration with Techalliance (London) and Communitech (Kitchener/Waterloo) and the support of many businesses in the communities of Woodstock, Ingersol and Tillsonburg, TecVana completed technical and marketing pilot projects through which it became very apparent that once you load local content into the app, this content could be marketed anywhere in the world without any changes to the content. This led to the TecVana doing a competitive submission to Grenada’s international request for proposals and the ultimate choice to create the new generation of mobile tourism marketing. With the broader market now available for the program, the name was changed to Open World Connect with Geo Adventuring being a major feature of the app.
TecVana Corporation - Open World Connect Platform
TecVana’s Open World Connect is an integrated digital media mobile platform solution developed to give communities the ability to cost effectively market their brand and tourist attributes to digital consumer on a global scale in order to increase their tourism business while providing mobile users real time and on-demand access to this information including features such as Geo Adventuring (gamification) to motivate the user to “Explore, Discover and Experience” the outdoors. The program is designed to cost effectively grow visitors to communities to spend dollars on local events, activities, adventures and businesses, whether the visitors are local citizens, people within the community of interest, within the region, and of course, nationally and international markets.
Doug Matatall Bio
D. Matatall has 30 years with Nortel Networks / Bell on national and international marketing focused on implementing new technology to the consumer market and experience in penetrating new markets for intelligent public access / self serve technology in USA on behalf of major businesses /clients (Sprint), As prime consultant for MHI Consulting, Doug did a consulting contract in Trinidad and Tobago in developing marketing strategies to use ICT as a backbone to make the country part of the global economy by the year 2020. He has had great success in building virtual teams to win international competitive contracts (T&T and now Grenada). He also has experience in working with academic institutes for developing innovative technology marketing strategies (4 case studies at Ivey School of Business & 3 years working with Fanshawe Advance Multi-Media program) as well as extensive management experience in working with people and developing business/management skill sets in younger employees; plus has extensive knowledge in business modeling, incentive and motivation planning and acknowledged expertise in developing leading edge marketing programs. A lifetime experience in bringing consumers to the benefits of technology!
Who is Inglefield/Ogilvy & Mather Caribbean Limited (IOM)
Formed in 1993, Inglefield/Ogilvy & Mather Caribbean Limited is a branding and marketing company driven to add value to client’s brands and business. Managing a number of local, regional and global brands, capabilities include branding, brand strategy, creative design, production and execution of all media material, media planning and placement in most markets of the Caribbean.
IOM develop global quality, business focused communication solutions that produce business results; in other words, brand engineers. It is a term that speaks to both an approach to build and implement compelling solutions from objective market and consumer data that also reflects the imperative to deliver measurable results. Engineers because of the use of globally proven planning tools and methodologies - the same tools that help make global brands successful.
IOM’s regional network spans The Bahamas in the north to Suriname on the South American mainland and Belize in the west to Barbados in the east giving access and on-ground support to the major Caribbean markets. The affiliation to Ogilvy and Mather and Mindshare expands IOM capability beyond the Caribbean to virtually any global market
