Case Study
Banff & Lake Louise Tourism

Reinventing Canada’s most iconic tourist destination

Banff National Park is an icon synonymous with Canada. It is also the second-largest national park in North America, attracting millions of visitors each year. Tourism in Banff and Lake Louise is managed by Banff and Lake Louise Tourism (BLLT) and VentureWeb has been partners with BLLT since 2015.

Starting at the beginning of our engagement, Banff and Lake Louise needed to re-imagine itself across the board. VentureWeb was brought in to completely reinvent the destination in alignment with a whole new brand strategy.

Objectives:

Deliver on the brand promise at all traveller touchpoints
Increase Banff National Park Pass revenue
Inspire and drive value to members
Increase destination visits for winter and shoulder seasons
Defend the strong summer position

A brand new story

A new website is widely accepted as the best way to introduce a whole new destination brand. Prior to commencing the website, BLLT developed their new “Moments” brand. We were tasked with applying the new brand to Banff and Lake Louise’s digital presence.

Re-imagining the experience

As a four-season destination, representing almost one thousand members, accommodations, attractions, events and experiences was no easy task. VW comprehensively restructured the organization's approach to UX by focusing on user-led content, architecture and navigation.

Great content can move mountains

One component of the website design & build project was the development of a content strategy to guide the creation of copy for the website. Pleased with the direction, BLLT retained us to develop the content for the entire website which was executed in a consistent voice and guided by SEO best practices. Large images and rich content were delivered powerfully using the Sanity CMS.

Amazing results come from thoughtful planning and identifying success

Since the beginning of our engagement, we have been assisting with strategic planning for the destination's digital platforms. This has allowed BLLT to uncover key data points for performance and decision-making. As part of our ongoing engagement with BLLT, we are constantly evolving the experience, reviewing website data via Looker Studio dashboards and implementing progressive enhancements for campaigns.

Amplifying and growing revenue

One of BLLT’s key revenue streams is via sales of Banff National Park passes which are required as you enter the park. VentureWeb was engaged to develop a custom online sales platform to improve UX and provide more detailed data reporting. In addition, we implemented a tactical pay-per-click campaign to drive Park Pass sales. We used a tactical strategy informed by our B2C client engagements to target prospective visitors to Banff. The implementation of this new tool has enjoyed double-digital revenue growth.

Developing a deeper relationship with guests

Over the last 5 years, BLLT has collected email addresses from a wide variety of guests and prospective guests but the organization didn’t have a cohesive CRM strategy. It looked to VentureWeb to audit its fragmented records, ensure compliance with CASL, GDPR, CANSPAM and CCPA and to segment based on user interests. We also conducted a rigorous review of available email service platforms and made recommendations for the ideal platform to help achieve BLLT’s email communication goals.

Services

Integrated in every sense of the word

Banff and Lake Louise Tourism have an extensive and multi-faceted working relationship which incorporates all of our key disciplines.

Strategy: Digital business strategies; Online situational audits; Outsourced campaign management; Road mapping
Design: UX design; UI design; Content development
Technology: UI development; Personalization; Systems engineering; Custom e-Commerce; CMS configuration; Headless development on Sanity; Prismic CMS; Multiple data services / (API) integrations
Growth: Digital marketing strategy; Content creation; SEO; PPC marketing (Google & Meta); Email marketing; Data, analytics tracking & insights reporting

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