Tweets Tempt Americans to Travel to Canada?

This summer, the Canadian Tourism Commission attempted to inspire Americans to vacation in the great white north by installing interactive murals in New York City, Chicago, and L.A. The murals displayed "real-time updates from and about Canada" from the Twitterverse. Check out the video below.

It certainly is eye-catching! I wish I could see the installation in person, because I'm worried that it doesn't do Canada justice. The one and only tweet that I found legible in the video reads: "During my stay in Canada, the trees in my yard grew so I couldn't go out by car, but I trimmed them quickly in the rain. FUN! :D" What!?! This is being read by citizens of three of the coolest cities in North America and they're supposed to want to go and buy a plane ticket to Canada after "interacting" with this kind of content?

I'm sure there were some really great photos and tweets about all the great tourism opportunities from Victoria to Ottawa to Halifax and everywhere in between... unfortunately they just aren't showcased in this video. In my personal opinion, I think social media could have been more effective as supplementary to a more traditional approach rather than as the focal point of this campaign. What do you think?

Vintage Ottawa Promotional Video

Take a trip back to the 40s with this awesome video - an episode of James A. Fitzpatrick's Traveltalks devoted to our own beautiful city of Ottawa. Thank you, YouTube! What a great promotional video for Ottawa tourism. As an Ottawan myself, it hits me that the video is so summer-focused given how striking our winters are.

Start Saving Now: Boeing to Offer Space Tourism in 2015

As a kid, I wasn’t as into space and the solar system as a lot of my peers, but taking a tour outside earth’s atmosphere was somewhere on my to-do list. When I grew up and opted not to go the astronaut route, I thought the “space travel” box on my list would remain unchecked. Now, I’m reconsidering.

Boeing, the world's leading aerospace company and the largest manufacturer of military and commercial airplanes in the world, has announced a partnership with marketing firm Space Adventures, and plans to send tourists into orbit in a new space capsule by early 2015.

Space Adventures has already sent seven well-to-do folks to space, but with the Boeing partnership, the number of space tourists should take a drastic jump. Take a look at this quote in the Ottawa Citizen today from Brewster Shaw, the VP and GM of Boeing’s Space Exploration Division:

"By combining our talents, we can better offer safe, affordable transportation to commercial spaceflight customers."

The definition of “affordable” certainly changes from person to person. And are “commercial spaceflight customers” really a consumer group? Previous trips way up to the International Space Station have run about $40 million, and though prices for the Boeing capsule haven’t yet been released, I can’t see them dropping too significantly. If prices come down $39,999,500 or so, I’m going to suggest a quick trip for a 2015 MB staff outing.