Toront03 Alliance

Enough Talk contained several recommendations for improving the tourist industry in the Toronto region. A simultaneous lack of investment in our attractions, and in marketing, was contributing to falling tourism marketing share. The coming of SARS in the spring of 2003 brought a new of level of crises to our tourism industry and in June of 2003 the Toronto City Summit Alliance spawned an organization called the Toront03 Alliance to help revitalize the tourism industry by promoting the Toronto region to US tourists. The Board of Toront03 was made up of leaders from the business community, the arts and entertainment industry, tourism organizations, and the restaurant and accommodation industry, and governments. T03's efforts were funded by a $10 million contribution from the federal government and $1.22 million in donations from the private sector, including $200 thousand from each of the major banks.

Notably, T03 supported and promoted the "Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto Concert" with the Rolling Stones, investing in print and radio advertising in large US markets. Forty-two thousand US concert ticket buyers attended the concert and contributed to the $75.2 million additional tourism spending that Moneris Solutions reported for the week of the concert versus the previous week.

TO3's direct response advertising drew over 100,000 US visitors to Toronto over the late summer and early fall. More importantly, it has made tens of millions of potential US tourists aware of the Toronto region and its attractions. For example, the T03 website was visited by more than 250 thousand people between its mid-July 2003 launch and its shut-down in late 2003. It averaged some 20 thousand visitors per week, each of whom typically viewed 15-to-25 pages, resulting in 400 thousand page views per week - very strong performance relative to other city tourism-related sites, particularly for a site that was up for a relatively short time. In February, 2004 T03 acted as one of the leading sponsors of the Conan O'Brian Show in Toronto. Conan in Toronto drew positive attention to our city for a massive American audience and, like the direct advertising and the website, its tourism benefits should be felt for years to come.

In terms of short term impact, using calculations done by PKF Consulting for the Province of Ontario, we estimate that T03's investment generated roughly $70 million in visitor spending.